


Battleborn: A Prophecy in Three Acts

by cobalamincosel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ateneo De Manila AU, Bottom Mark Lee (NCT), Brief mention of cunnilingus?, Creampie, Historical Inaccuracy, I REPEAT THE MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH IS TEMPORARY, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, Reincarnation, Strangers to Lovers, Threesome - F/M/M, major character death is temporary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:20:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel
Summary: In one lifetime, General Lee Minhyung and General Seo Youngho face each other first as lovers, and then as enemies on a battlefield that spells the end of war between their two lands.In another, Mark Lee and Johnny Suh are brought back together by the winds of Fate.This is their story.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 216
Kudos: 351





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cleonhart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cleonhart/gifts).



> On April 8, Dia sent me a video of her rambling about the clip of Mark and Johnny in the NCT Uncut video for Kick It, and how she thought of a "really sad reincarnation au where Mark is forced to kill Johnny in the past, and then they get reincarnated in modern times and they get to be in love and stuff." 
> 
> I started vibrating at a normal speed. 
> 
> I got to work later that night. 
> 
> This work is for her, both as a thank you for letting me run away with the idea, and also for giving me a 6-minute voice note that really changed the game for the succeeding chapter. 
> 
> This is one of the most challenging stories I've ever written. I told myself, "This will be chill! No need to be research-intensive!" but then it just got out of my control and then I was watching battle scenes and looking up architecture and asking friends if this or that idea worked lmao. In any case!!! I have loved loved loved writing this. 
> 
> This is a special thank you note to Any, whose steady and skilled hand helped shaped this entire story and who literally stayed up all night to help me polish the draft. To Ain who has gone over this and given feedback and has been my cheerleader since I told her about the story. To Cap who also beta read this, gave suggestions and who made the absolutely gorgeous moodboard for this story. 
> 
> And as always, to my muse Klo, who cheered me on while I wrote this.

ACT I

  
  


“General Lee,” a voice calls out over the grand expanse of marble that stretches between Minhyung and the Queen Regnant. “Come forward.”

Minhyung strides forward quickly, the heels of his boots echoing in the massive chamber, his sword sheathed at his side, bumping against his hand as he walks. The hall is gilded with gold along the walls, and there are too many handmaidens and advisors for him to be comfortable. Ostentatious, if Minghyung were to give his opinion. But he’s not here for his opinions. No one cares about opinions when you are the Queen Regnant’s prizefighter. 

The Queen Regnant sits up straighter as he approaches and falls to his knees. 

This is the woman Minhyung has sworn his entire life to. He was born into her service and trained to be her sword, an extension of her power from the day he learned to walk. Minhyung remembers an echo of memory: a valley, a small cottage, a river, and later, a woman handing him off to a man who had taken his hand and made him walk and walk and walk for days under the hot sun until his feet had blistered over.

He remembers three others with him, but more than anything, Minhyung remembers the day he met her, a young woman with skin pale as the snow-capped mountains he'd remembered seeing in the distance when he would play outside. Minhyung had been brought to the palace steps, and there a woman named "Joohyun" had crouched down in front of him, brushed his hair back, and said, "Welcome to Attolia, little one."

Minhyung is not her son. He is not the Crown Prince--that title belongs to the queen’s actual son, her only child, Prince Ji-sung. But he might as well be, given how he’s been treated his entire life, how after she had taken him in, after she’d determined his potential, she’d housed him within the palace, clothed him, trained him, given him a name and a title: General Lee Minhyung.

Still. Today is a reminder that he is Sword and not Son. 

Today, he will be called to war, or rather, to end it. 

“My Queen,” Minghyung says, hand over his chest. All he sees is the red velvet of her long grown, the regal wear that signifies Attolia is at war. He is sure that Gerota’s Queen sports the same, only in blue. 

Fucking Gerota. 

Fucking war. 

“Minhyung,” Queen Joohyun says, her voice firm, but sweet. He knows she does not want to do this. He knows that she would give anything to not have to send him off, but this is war, and these are the terms. Minhyung swallows as he prepares for her to solidify the mandate. Make it real. This is where she will seal his death. Possibly. 

“My beautiful fighter,” Queen Joohyun says sadly. “You know why I have called you here.”

“Indeed, your Majesty,” Minhyung says, eyes still downcast. “To serve you, as I have vowed.” 

Queen Joohyun is silent for a moment. 

“The battle is to take place at sunrise in a fortnight,” she says. “All the resources you need to prepare will be given to you, as always. You will end this war for us.” 

Minhyung bows his head in supplication. 

“In your name, My Queen, and for Attolia,” Minhyung shouts, pulling his voice deep from his diaphragm so it carries through the hall, across the heads of the chattering crowd that flanks them both. “I will fight to the death of Gerota. Long live Queen Joohyun! For Attolia!” 

“Long live Queen Joohyun! For Attolia!” rings out in the hall as the court responds. 

Minhyung looks up at his queen, at her smiling face, her sad eyes, the Crown Prince fast asleep in her arms, swaddled in white linen. She nods at him once, a dismissal. She is beautiful, and she is severe, the strongest queen that Attolia has known, stronger even than her mother, Queen Yoona who ruled before her. The war has stretched on for years, has ravaged both lands to the point where the people had started staging uprisings on both sides. 

As Minhyung bows once more before taking his leave, he thinks about the two weeks he has to prepare for his battle. He thinks about who he will face. Wishes there was another way, but he knows that this war will only end with spilled blood. 

It is up to him whether that blood is his, or Youngho’s. 

⚔⚔⚔

The alarm clock blaring from his desk makes Johnny’s eyes fly open, his heart racing as he sits up in bed, absolutely confused for the first five seconds of consciousness. He reaches out over his small table to grab his phone and shut the alarm off. _6:30 am_. Christ. Another one of those dreams. 

Johnny turns his neck left and right, his bones cracking in a way that would have been concerning if he wasn’t so used to it at this point. There’s a tension in his back that hasn’t left him for the last month, and it’s because he keeps having these goddamn dreams. 

He glances over at the lump under the bed not even 3 meters from his, Kun still fast asleep since his next class is at 10 am.

Johnny sighs deep and long before swinging his legs over the side of his bed, his feet feeling for his bedroom slippers as he takes his towel and his basket and makes his way to the communal bathroom. He needs a hot shower, something to soothe his back before he has to make his way to class. 

His reflection looks worse for wear, his eyes puffy as his chest aches from the residual heaviness of his dream. Johnny doesn’t quite understand why he keeps dreaming about himself and a boy he’s never met. But he keeps having them intermittently, and every morning when he wakes, he has a stone that sits on his chest for the entirety of the morning before it fades with the afternoon sun and his mind starts to find ways to curb his impending hunger for lunch.

Maybe he needs to lay off the caffeine or something. 

As he lets the heat dissipate into his skin, Johnny closes his eyes, trying to see if he can hold on to the wisps of the dream. It was definitely him again, the one his dream self called Minhyung. A boy whose features were severe where he stood, where the clouds roiled behind him, his eyes fixed on Johnny, his hand on the pommel. Except he didn’t call him Johnny. _Youngho_. 

Nothing ever happens in these dreams, except that in them, he knows this boy, and from his mouth, he calls out “Minhyung!” like he’s angry like he’s in anguish. Minhyung looks at him and time flows like molasses, his eyes hard, his mouth turned down at the corners. The wind had blown through the ground between them, sweeping across the tall grass as they stood in front of each other. 

Johnny shakes himself and opens his eyes, careful to not let the shampoo spill into them. Some of the tension leaves, and he manages to roll his back so he straightens out in the shower that he’s slightly too tall for. Just another day, just another dream. 

He dresses quickly, shoving one leg into his pants as he hops around trying to find his contacts case, belatedly remembering that he needs to pick up more lens solution before he gets home. He’s got four lectures to attend today and it’s already grating on him, knowing how far the lecture halls for his second and third ones are from each other. Johnny settles on sneakers for the day, since he knows he’s going to be sprinting across campus anyway. 

He makes it to his ENLIT 199.3 class with ten minutes to spare, though he doubts that he’d have been late anyway, given that Professor Ensamo doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record for coming in early. Besides: Doyoung’s the class beadle anyway, and he’s never really taken his job seriously when it comes to logging tardiness. 

It is clear that the class is still on its way to waking up even as Professor Ensamo walks in with her massive tumbler in hand and a stack of papers in her other arms. She enters the room looking frazzled like the wind blew her in, but her eyes are bright. Johnny can tell that she’s probably had as much coffee as he has, which is to say, about three. 

The class passes by sluggishly. He thanks his luck that his next class is only just one floor down, and in about two hours, it's the sprint from this building to SEC-C that he’s dreading. He’s just glad he had the foresight to meal prep the night before. 

In spite of Ensamo's over-caffeinated energy, her lecture was anything but, and Johnny's brain moves at a snail’s pace waiting for the hour to run up. It's when he starts to feel his eyes cross and his cheek slip against the heel of his palm that the students around him start to anxiously close up their books and exit the classroom.

His Postcolonial Lit class goes by significantly faster than his first one, but he’s starting to nod off towards the end of it, Yuta having to nudge him awake before his elbow slips off the side of the desk. 

The church bell recording that tolls over the speakers signifying that it is noon rings through the hallways and Johnny packs his backpack quickly as Yuta salutes him since he knows Johnny’s got a class while Yuta can head back to the dorms and kick it since he’s done for the day. Fucking Interdisciplinary Studies majors really got the best sort of schedule. Johnny wishes he had made better choices four years ago. 

He’s running across Bellarmine Field which he knows is technically not allowed but fuck it, there aren’t any guards nearby and he’s fucked if he ticks off another tardy box in Taeyong’s book for this Politics and Governance class. This is truly the worst fucking schedule on earth and he wonders why he didn’t just opt to buy a goddam bike the way Doyoung had suggested. This campus is too big for a back-to-back schedule like this. 

He’s running halfway across the Red Brick Road when he first feels it: the searing pain that courses through his side, cutting through his right flank like an exposed wound. The pain is so great that he falls to his knees, and his eyes are closed tight, watering behind his eyelids before he feels his shoulder connect with bone and bricked ground. 

“Fuck! Sorry, oh my god,” a voice says as Johnny feels the pain slowly, slowly start to ebb. There are hands on Johnny’s arms, his shoulders as someone tries to help him sit up, and his heart is racing from the exertion of running and the sudden lick of flame that coursed along his flank. “Hey man, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going!”

Johnny’s eyes open, and he feels ice wash over him, his hands growing cold where he’s got them pressed into his side. He wonders if the sudden pain has made him start to hallucinate, but before he can stop himself, the face before his swims into focus, and his lips are forming the words unbidden.

“Minhyung?” Johnny says, staring at the boy from his dreams. 

⚔⚔⚔

Minhyung makes his way to the courtyard, the sounds of steel and grunting echoing through the walkway before he catches sight of the Royal Guard. Chanyeol stands in the center of the area cordoned off for practice, the men and women around him sparring with daggers and bare hands. All techniques he’d learned in the past. All techniques he will have to run through again and again if he wants to stand a chance against his opponent. 

“Minhyung,” Chanyeol says, beckoning him over. The mass of their army pauses in their movements, and they all drop to their knees, right knee on the ground, left knee up, arms braced over air to recognize Minhyung’s authority, his rank. 

The Royal Guard as it stands is only a fourth of what it used to be. This war has taken so much from them as a people, entire families wiped out in battle after battle until Queen Seulgi and Queen Joohyun finally arranged for the terms of war to end in this: the culmination of three years over land disputes and a vicious need to supersede the other. Two men’s lives put on the line for the sake of two nations. Simple. Should have been done sooner. 

Except that Minhyung had to go and fall in love with the man who will be on the other end of his sword. 

Foolish. Absolutely foolish. 

The Royal Guard stands when Minhyung raises his two fingers in the air in acknowledgment of their respect for him. 

“At ease,” Minhyung says, and the Guard relaxes, turning back to their sparring partners as Chanyeol takes him by the elbow. 

“You have received the news,” Chanyeol says, looking over at the horizon, off to where Gerota stands. 

“I have,” Minhyung replies. 

“Are you ready?” Chanyeol asks. He folds his arms over his bare chest, the tattoos that mark him as the head of the Royal Guard stark black against his golden skin. 

“I have trained my entire life to be ready for this, sir,” Minhyung says, voice firm. 

Chanyeol looks at him, and Minhyung doesn’t see his captain--he sees his friend, and his friend does not want to see him go. 

“I don’t mean that, and you know it,” Chanyeol says quietly, his back ramrod straight. 

The wind blows through the olive trees that line the training grounds, carrying with it the scent of Attolia, the land he loves.

The land he would die for. 

“I am ready, sir,” Minhyung reiterates, his voice cutting Chanyeol off before he decides to press further. 

Very few know about Youngho, and even fewer know about how Minhyung feels about the man. Chanyeol is, unfortunately, one of them, a necessity given how he’d seen Minhyung with Youngho before this war reared its ugly fucking head. 

Minhyung had known, when he had gotten the summons in the morning, that this would be the culmination. In the hours since, he has managed to stem the emotion that this directive has given him. It has been years, after all, since he last saw Youngho. Years of silence, years between the people they were when their countries were still at peace. 

And now, Minhyung has to kill him--that is, of course, assuming that Youngho does not manage to kill him first. 

Minhyung swallows down his emotion. It is something he is good at, has trained for, constantly hacking away at himself as the days have passed. As he takes off layer after layer of his stiff garb, the folds of his white suit coming apart as he undresses to his barest of clothing as if he is twelve and not twenty-five, learning the art of the sword for the very first time. He glances over at Chanyeol who takes his own sword from the sheathe, the fine engraving on its fuller catching in the sunlight. 

Minhyung remembers when he was young, brandishing about a wooden sword, Siwon adjusting his posture, his stance. _Shoulders back, chin up high._

“This is a dance, Minhyung,” Siwon had said then, all those years ago. “I am going to teach you how to dance.” 

Minhyung had known nothing then except for brash lunges and the useless expenditure of energy without any of the prowess. 

“All bark, no bite, Little Lion Man,” Siwon had laughed when Minhyung had held his arm out in an attempt to attack his mentor. Chanyeol had been seated off to the side then, his dull sword in his grip, a small chuckle under his breath. Minhyung remembers having been so incensed hearing it. He was going to prove them wrong.

And he had. 

Minhyung had worked his way steadily, training hour after hour, the rigorous schedule shaping his small body into something that started slowly resembling the men and women that made up the Royal Guard. Every lunge was refined, every movement of his body controlled until the fight was as easy as breathing. Siwon’s voice rang loud in his head day in and day out, telling him to dance like water, dance like fire. Strike hard and strike fast, breathe in, hold it, press forward. 

As the days wore on, the moon waxing and waning while Minhyung spent days under the hot sun under Siwon’s tutelage, and later, Chanyeol’s, Minhyung learned over and over that he was to be sharpened, honed, a trained killer, the best of the best, to be reserved only for the direst of situations. 

“You are a sword,” Chanyeol had said, when Minhyung had turned sixteen, blood pouring from his eyebrow from where the point had scratched him. Minhyung was on the ground, chest heaving, his weapon off to the side from where Chanyeol had disarmed him. “Act like one. Get up. Again.” 

⚔⚔⚔

The searing pain has ebbed by the time the man he’s crashed into is helping him up. There are other hands on his elbows, his back, but Johnny can’t shake the fact that the guy he’s looking at is the man whose face has invaded his dreams for the last month. 

It’s impossible. 

It’s impossible because while Johnny’s had a couple of misses, his memory is pretty good, and he would never forget a face like this. High cheekbones, worry-bitten lips, wide eyes that shine like galaxies. There is no doubt in Johnny’s mind that this is Minhyung. Except--

“Sorry dude, my name’s Mark? Mark Lee,” the guy says, and Johnny could shake apart because it is the same voice from when he has his eyes closed in sleep. 

“I’m really sorry, I should have been more mindful of where I was looking,” he continues. 

_Mark. Mark Lee_. 

Impossible. 

Johnny stares and stares as he rights himself, the strangers behind him patting him on the shoulder to signal their departure. 

“Are you okay? The infirmary’s right there, I can take you,” Mark says frantically. 

He speaks but Johnny still can’t reconcile the two. _Why is he so familiar?_ He remembers when Kun had once told him that the faces in dreams were a composite of the people they’d met before, and Johnny rifles through the folders in his mind trying to figure out where the fuck he’s seen Mark before, but it really isn’t just that. Beyond recognizing how he looks, what Johnny can’t seem to place is how he _feels_ familiar, like his nerve endings are singing, like his body recognizes something it’s known before. 

Johnny glances at his watch, panic setting in now that the pain has left him, and he sees that he’s got approximately three minutes to make it to class before the door is closed on him yet again. 

“Fuck, I’m so sorry for bumping into you, dude,” Johnny squawks, stumbling over his words and his feet and snatching his bag up. “I gotta run, sorry! Thanks!” 

And he’s off, the guy’s face just as bewildered as Johnny feels, but he shoves the thought to the side as he runs, powers through the stitch in his side as he bolts up the flight of stairs, hoping his sneakers don’t do some dumb shit like untie themselves before he sees the door beginning to close. He reaches out with his hand, effectively stopping Taeyong from closing it fully. 

“Close call, Johnny,” Taeyong says as Johnny enters the room, panting as he sets his backpack on the ground next to his seat. At least he’d been smart enough to get the chair closest to the door on day one of their classes. 

This class is going to be the death of him for more reasons than just the distance. Politics and Governance is not exactly a compelling subject for him, and it’s hard for him to excel at things he’s not entirely interested in, but he’s not about to squander his final semester at the Ateneo just because he couldn’t be arsed to put in a little more work into a subject that bored him half to death. 

Johnny does his best to focus on the lecture, he really does, but he can’t shake the feeling that someone is looking at him from behind, the hairs on the back of his neck standing when he remembers the flash of Mark’s face, superimposing itself on the boy from his dreams. 

_Mark Lee. Mark Lee._

Johnny hides his phone from view, the open textbook providing enough cover for him to slide the brightness on his screen down to a respectable minimum. He opens Twitter to key in the words ‘ _Mark Lee_ ’ in the search bar, which of course pulls up a billion other fucking Mark Lees in the world. He searches through the first few usernames he finds--a fucking egg for a profile photo; some Mark Lee from Canada who looks 30 years too old; a Chinese student from a different university. Not a single one with the face he knows. He tries Facebook instead.

And there he is. 

Mark Lee from his university. 

Barely anything, but Johnny stares at the circle profile photo of a young man, smiling up at the camera like he’d gotten caught mid-laughter, wearing the same lanyard that Johnny had caught a flash of in the split second he’d managed to take his eyes off of Mark’s face. 

Gingerly, Johnny touches his flank and the right lower quadrant of his abdomen where the searing pain had shot through. He wonders if he’s got a ruptured appendix. He should definitely ask Kun about it. He's Pre-Med, this should make sense to him. 

Kun will probably give him some fucking lecture too about how he needs to lay off the Red Bull at night, and he’ll use his second-year psychology class to explain why Johnny thinks he’s seeing a boy from his dreams in real life. Maybe he’s right. Jesus. 

It’s forty minutes later when Professor Moon sets down his whiteboard marker on the little silver ledge of the board that Johnny is truly pulled back to reality.

“So I’m not sure if you guys have heard that there’s going to be a new exhibit coming in a few weeks to the Arete?” Professor Moon says. “In conjunction with the History Department, we’ve decided that one of the special projects will be based on a special loan visiting from the Met Museum in New York. This is especially timely since we’ll be studying the Attolian-Gerotan War later in the semester. Please do check it out when it comes. It’s an excellent collection and even the most uninterested will benefit from visiting it.”

Johnny feels like this is a dig at him somehow, but Professor Moon’s face is pleasant the entire time as he nods and dismisses them. Taeyong is at his side immediately, scrolling through his phone while Johnny stuffs his binder into his backpack. 

“Johnny, today was too close a call,” Taeyong says, sounding a little more apologetic than Johnny expects. 

“Hey, it’s all good,” Johnny says. “You’re just doing your job as a beadle. I just had like a minor accident on the way here. I wouldn’t have been as frantic if it hadn’t been for that.”

“What happened?” Taeyong asks, a frown creasing between his eyebrows. 

“Dude, you’re not even gonna believe me if I tell you,” Johnny laughs, slinging his backpack over one shoulder as they exit the classroom.

“Try me,” Taeyong says. 

Johnny sighs. 

“What do you know about dreams?”

⚔⚔⚔

Chanyeol clears his throat and Minhyung is brought back to present, a momentary lapse for a time long gone. 

“Get out of your head, Minhyung,” Chanyeol says without vitriol. 

Minhyung simply nods and takes up his sword, Griever, before Chanyeol halts him with his hand. 

“No, today we use the _kontos_ ,” Chanyeol says. 

Minhyung nods. Polearms are not something he’s as adept in compared to when he has his own sword in his hand, but he does see the value. Distance, after all. Chanyeol knows his opponent, and so does Minghyung. He presses his palm into the lion face engraved into the pommel and sheaths his sword before placing it gently back on the wooden bench. 

The army sets itself down in a circle to watch them train, obediently sitting on the grass as the two strongest fighters of their kingdom circle each other, both in white linen pants and nothing else. 

The sun casts its heavy arms over them, the light touching every inch of Minhyung’s skin, the light bouncing off of the stone that lines the walls of their training grounds. Again, a breeze. 

Minhyung inhales, closes his eyes, clears his head. 

His opponent does not matter. His opponent will see him and not think twice about striking, and neither should he. The matters of the heart are secondary to the promise he sealed his life away to when he was brought into the palace to become the Queen’s fighter.

“Ready,” Chanyeol says, bringing his own sword out. Its reach is significantly shorter than the _kontos_ in Minhyung’s hands, but any weapon changes its ability in the right hands, and even if Minhyung is at a handicap here, he is adaptable, and he knows this weapon well because this polearm is an extension of himself, and he has complete control over himself. Dance like water. Dance like fire. 

Minhyung bows, and as he brings his eyes up to level Chanyeol with a calm demeanor, he tries to imagine Youngho’s face, though he finds that he can barely remember it at this point. It has been too long. He does not know yet whether this will serve him well come the fortnight, but at present, he finds that his heart is calm. 

The wood is heavy in his hands, and the fact that he requires both to handle this frustrates him, but he refuses to let it show. He has studied how Chanyeol moves with Malice, the name he’d given his sword, and he knows how he will strike. And Chanyeol is feather-light, agile, different from how he remembers Youngho fights, but Chanyeol will do. 

Minhyung may not have the advantage of height or reach but he is light on his feet and quick, his movements precise as he blocks strike after strike from his mentor, his friend, who pushes him harder today than he has all their lives. 

They move quickly, the Royal Guard watching them both closely so as to learn better, in the hopes that should they die for Attolia, they die valiantly, and with honor. Always honor. 

Minhyung allows the feeling to flow through him, the lessons of his youth as he feels the near-brush of a fatal blow after blow with Malice millimeters from his skin. 

“Move faster, Minhyung,” Chanyeol commands, and Minhyung follows. 

On the field, there will be no one but him. Chanyeol will not be present, not anywhere near. He will watch from a distance as the Fates and Minhyung’s ability will determine the future of Attolia. All Minhyung knows is that if he is the one to spill blood, he wins peace for his Queen Regnant, and nothing--nothing at all--can stand in the way of that. 

Attolia took him in. Attolia raised him, trained him, loved him. 

Queen Jooyhun, in all her kindness, has given him nothing but the best, clothed him and fed him and sharpened him to this point. His entire life’s work leading up to this. 

He feels the smooth lacquered wood between his hands and wills his spirit to course through it like he imagines the priests do when they walk around with their staffs. An inhale means he rears back; an exhale means he pushes forward, the blade nearly striking Chanyeol across the cheek as Chanyeol moves away from the direct line of his weapon. 

Minhyung feels alive, adrenaline in his veins as he lets his body move for what feels like hours, ducking and rolling away, his arms extended in front of him before he spins the polearm in his hands and then attempts to strike at Chanyeol’s legs which are unguarded. This fight still comes with restraint, and it is clear to both of them that is only a shadow of what Minhyung is capable of. 

“Stop holding back!” Chanyeol shouts, his breath still steady as if he’s barely moved, though the sweat on his forehead shows the actual manifestation of the limits he’s pushing himself to. 

Minhyung, ever obedient, allows something inside of himself to loosen. His mind quiets, his hands steady, and then he’s spinning the _kontos_ like a staff in the air until he launches himself forward from a crouch, pushing with full force to extend the point that circumvents Chanyeol’s attempt at blocking him with Malice. 

The blade slices clean through on Chanyeol’s side, blood blossoming slowly, and then all at once by his twelfth rib. If Minhyung had moved it just a centimeter to the left, the blow would have been fatal. Chanyeol drops his sword to the ground, both hands flying to his ribs, glancing down before looking up at Minhyung.

Chanyeol’s smile is triumphant. 

“About time, Little Lion,” Chanyeol says, fruitlessly stemming the flow of blood from his side. Minhyung bows at the hip, low and reverent. He may be the Queen’s fighter, but this is still his mentor and Siwon’s disciple. It is respect he owes, and it is respect he gives willingly. 

Chanyeol shouts a command to make the Royal Guard resume their training, with the trained persons standing up at attention while Chanyeol walks over to the bench where he’d kept his clothing and a small leather pouch. Minhyung collapses on the bench next to Chanyeol’s royal garb, the deep maroon of the cloth the same color as the blood still spilling from his side. 

The apology rests on the tip of Minhyung’s tongue, but he is fully aware that should he even attempt to say sorry, Chanyeol will personally drag him to the Queen Regnant and toss him to the ground as unfit to fight for the country. He did as he was told, to an extent. If he had done so fully, Chanyeol would no longer be breathing, but rather having to deal with a collapsed lung and no means to fix it. 

Instead, he watches silently as Chanyeol pulls out a small glass jar with a white salve in it, pulling at the cork stopper and digging into the oily matter, a heaping mound of the _yunna baiyao_ on his still-bleeding wound. It stems the flow almost instantly. The physicians that the kingdom has are renowned even as far as Sagada, the mountain land that leads toward the outer sea. It is no wonder that so many have come to Attolia for study. 

“It is one thing to go against me, Minhyung,” Chanyeol says quietly. “It is another thing entirely to go up against a man you love.”

Minhyung freezes.

"Don't pretend," Chanyeol says. "No one else knows, but I know, and that's much more than should be expected."

Minhyung measures his words carefully in the hopes that he sounds convincing enough both to himself and to his mentor.

"Chanyeol, I need you to listen to me," Minhyung says. "Nothing exists between me and Youngho any longer. It was a brief tryst. Nothing more."

"Is that something you would have said had the war not taken place?" Chanyeol says, his voice so low Minhyung barely catches it. "I am not here as your mentor. I am speaking to you as your friend."

Minhyung purses his lips, careful to not let his irritation bleed through so much that Chanyeol may take offense.

"There is no objective way for me to answer that question," Minhyung says stiffly. "He is a man I once knew, and no longer know. When I face him he will be a stranger, and when I face him, he will be dead by my hand."

There is no feeling that accompanies Minhyung's words which make their way over to Chanyeol, whose concern is evident in the frown on his face.

"You love Attolia, as you should," Chanyeol says. "But you cannot deny that Attolia ruined you."

"Ruined me?" Minhyung snaps, his words biting. 

"I had a hand in this," Chanyeol says. "I'm sorry."

"What are you going on about, Chanyeol?" Minhyung asks, slowly starting to forget his place, though clearly Chanyeol has forgotten _his._

Minhyung may not know where he came from, but he knows his heart was raised in Attolia. His allegiance lies in the country that fed him, bathed him, sharpened his mind, his wit, wielded him with a sword. Attolia shaped Minhyung, and Minhyung became one with Attolia.

"Oh, Minhyung," Chanyeol says. "You truly are the Queen's sword, aren't you?"

It isn't a question. It's a statement.

_This is what you made me to be, and I accepted it._

⚔⚔⚔

"So you're telling me," Taeyong says patiently, his half-eaten sandwich halfway to his mouth, "that in these dreams, you only ever see a boy that your dream self calls 'Minhyung' and nothing spicy happens? You just stare at each other and you both have swords?"

"I have a sword and a shield, and he has a sword and a like, a thing?” Johnny gestures, jousting an invisible spear. “With a long pole? Like, imagine a knife tied to the end of a long stick? Pretty sure I can Google it," Johnny says, pulling his browser up on his phone. "And also why are you fixating on the lack of spice?"

Taeyong shrugs.

"Most of my dreams are either really bizarre like, I had one where I got eaten by tigers in an abandoned apartment complex," Taeyong says, biting off another mouthful of his chicken sandwich. "Or really spicy. And they usually don't recur. I think my only recurring ones were the ones where my teeth were falling out but then that's only happened twice and that was when my grandparents died."

"See! See what I mean! Like that's a superstition, right? If your teeth fall off in your dream, that means that death is coming?" Johnny says, running his fingers through his hair before leaning forward intently. "What if my dreams are trying to tell me something about Mark Lee?"

"It's weird to hear you talk about the man of your dreams existing in real life, man," Taeyong says, finishing off his sandwich and licking some of the honey butter that's dripped down the side of his hand. "But okay, suppose your dreams were premonitions like literally nothing happens in the dreams right? You just stand there?"

"Yeah, sure," Johnny says, gathering up their trash and used utensils onto a tray so they can CLAYGo and get their deposit back for returning them to the designated areas. "But like, I guess I can extrapolate that we're going to fight, right? Like we're facing off."

They walk to the back of the open-air cafeteria that sits comfortably in the shade between CTC Building and Sec-C Building to wash their hands before heading off to their next class, Johnny's last.

"It just doesn't make sense, Yong," Johnny says, using his handkerchief to wipe off the excess water from his hands. "Like when I wake up from these dreams, I feel almost heartbroken. And earlier right before I saw him, the like, it felt like I'd been stabbed by his fancy long stick thingy but worse. What if this Minhyung killed me? And what if my dream is warning me that Mark Lee wants to kill me?"

Taeyong levels Johnny with the most unimpressed expression imaginable.

"What!” Johnny throws his hands up in the air, exasperated. “Listen! If you can predict your grandparents' death with falling out teeth dreams, who's to say that my dreams aren't warning me of an impending murder?" 

Taeyong turns to Johnny and looks murderous. Maybe Johnny's thinking about the wrong possible killer.

"You are _not_ going to start avoiding a person you literally crashed into on campus just because you think your dream self and your actual alive self are going to be murdered by him," Taeyong says, squinting his eyes at Johnny like he’s reached his limit of Johnny’s dumbassery for the day.

They walk into their film elective class shortly before Professor Lim dims the lights and they settle in for the next movie they're set to take apart for discussion, and Johnny has no choice but to drop the topic.

⚔⚔⚔

Minhyung is not a prince, but in so many ways, he is treated like one. He wonders if that is meant to offset the fact that he’s a trained killer. He has many roles: assassin, emissary, the end of all things. He wonders if that is meant to help him sleep better at night.

He makes his way into the palace, the greens, and blues that make up the mosaic on the floor looking eerie as the torches that light his way hold up flames that flicker in the evening breeze. There are usually no servants in this area, not at this time, so he is left to his thoughts and his thoughts alone. 

The day feels like it has stretched on for more sunsets than just the one he’d witnessed after training had ended. Tomorrow, Minhyung will awaken once again at dawn, and resume. Nothing else is to fill his days leading up to the battle at Milden Field where he will stand opposite Youngho. 

Chanyeol’s voice, as always, rings in his ears. 

_It is another thing entirely to go up against a man you love._

Is that even what Youngho is to him anymore? 

Minhyung pushes the heavy door to his room open, the olivewood giving under his force, showing the modest room that Queen Joohyun had had arranged for him. She had wanted to house him in a bigger space, wanted something opulent the way his childhood bedroom had been, but as he grew older, the more he wanted simpler things: a bed, a place to bathe and relieve himself, just a shelf for his readings and scrolls. They had come to a compromise, and she had given him all that he’d asked for, though when he had stepped into the room, he had known that she had taken her liberties. 

The bed that gleams white with its polished maple wood, is far too large for him. It used to be too large even for him and Youngho, back when--

Minhyung sighs. He sets Griever down on the mantel, where the sword is braced by a brass holder. 

“Fit for a prince,” Youngho had said when he’d first seen it. 

Minhyung has had to mourn the loss of his lover once. Soon, he will grieve him all over again. 

His head hangs heavy as he takes a seat by the fireplace, its flames bright and crackling, the only noise that cuts through his thoughts. It is a wonder at all that Minhyung has been able to carry on living in this very room when so much of his relationship with Youngho had been conducted in it, in the silence of the palace at night. Always at night. 

Minhyung wonders what Youngho looks like in the sunlight. He wouldn’t know. Has never known. It had not been a lie when he had told Chanyeol it had just been a short tryst, but it must be the Fates that brought them together, and what keeps them apart. 

Surely, there must be an explanation in the stars that the priests can somehow make sense of for why the only time Minhyung has ever felt like his body and his spirit were bridged was when Youngho had held him, had kissed him, had ravished his body while the sun began to creep up into the horizon. Surely, there must be a Divine Plan that makes clear the reason why listening to Youngho speak about living in a land far away from their own made his heartache for the knowledge that it would not come to fruition. 

They had known that their affair was a dangerous one--the only transgression Minhyung has ever made against the Queen and his country. Letters were a gamble. Minhyung making the trek to Gerota was too riddled with the fear that Gerota’s guards would behead him on sight, despite the war not having taken place yet. 

It was a wonder at all that they had crossed paths, that Youngho had found him on Almeda Hill that evening. Minhyung had never met a man like him--a soldier, even when his clothing had been simple, just a brown vest over a white tunic, his hair dark and cropped short at the sides. He looked nothing like the Attolian men, and his stature spoke of his heritage. Minhyung had taken one look at the man approaching him with a horse in tow and had known that he was a Gerotan man who spelled trouble. 

Charming. So charming, with a laugh that crept up from his chest through his mouth. _Youngho_ , he had said. _How did you know I was from Gerota?_

Minhyung had not known what had compelled him to answer how he had. He’d never cared much for the affections of others, though some members of the Royal Guard had tried. He’d paid not a single one of them mind, but when faced with the handsome man from the neighboring land, Minhyung had been bolstered with a confidence that he hadn’t known he’d possessed. 

“No man from Attolia looks as handsome as you do,” Minhyung had said, before clamping his mouth shut with his hands. 

That was when Minhyung had first heard Youngho’s laugh. The first of many. The moon had been full that night, and Minhyung had to make his way back to the palace, his own horse already napping under the swaying olive tree they’d sat under. 

Minhyung shakes himself. _It does not do good to dwell on these things_ , he tells himself. Back in his room, mind fully present, he begins to undress once again, walking behind the partition between his bed and the bath that sits at the end of the rectangular room. He opens both taps, the boiling heat and the ice-cold water filling the bathtub and the wash area with steam. 

Minhyung glances at himself in the mirror by the bath, his arms corded over with muscle, the singular mark of his being part of the Queensguard resting over his heart, the disjointed lines a symbol of his allegiance to Attolia and her people. 

He wonders where Youngho will strike him. He wonders if his heart would kill him in less time than his gut. He looks so young in his reflection, the fire bathing his features to make him look gaunter than he actually is. 

He steps into the tub and the heat envelopes him. The porcelain has warmed where it touches the back of his neck. Minhyung stretches his legs out, his toes barely reaching the end of the tub. Another liberty that the queen herself had decided to take when she had planned his room. 

The water gently trickles into his bath as he works a cream into his hair, the memory of Youngho massaging his scalp coming unbidden. 

“Black as coal, will you look at that,” Youngho had laughed, his fingers in Minhyung’s hair. “Like the fairytales the wet nurses like to tell.” 

This memory is unwelcome. This memory is the first time he had lain with Youngho--the first time he had lain with a man, which felt nothing like the softness of the women Minhyung had brought back to his bed. The first time he’d been held in a manner that didn’t think was possible like he was made of the finest Attolian glass and Youngho was afraid to break him, but Youngho had learned very quickly that there was much more to him than his frame let on. 

Minhyung closes his eyes and can almost feel Youngho’s fingers pulling at his hair while he’d sat between Youngho’s legs, the water turning cold, Youngho’s other hand splayed on Minhyung’s abdomen, stroking as Minhyung had asked: “What is Gerota like?” 

Youngho had hummed into the back of Minhyung’s neck before peppering it with kisses. 

“It is beautiful,” Youngho had replied. “Every square inch, from the highest points in the snow-capped mountains, and in the mouth of the valley between them. There is the most delicious fish that swims in a river as wide as the Moltas here, and deer that like to hide in the forests. In the winter, when the river has frozen over, we like to dance on it."

“It sounds like a place I’d like,” Minhyung had said that night, his fingers lacing through Youngho’s on his belly. 

“Come away with me, then,” Youngho had whispered. 

“My heart is Attolia,” Minhyung had replied without hesitation. 

He remembers the wry smile Youngho had given him, the press of Youngho’s lips on his temple before he had said, “Of course,” and had never brought it up again. 

Minhyung scrubs at his skin with his blunt nails and remembers how he had done the same to Youngho’s back, red tracks blossoming like morning glories on his tanned skin, visible from where Minhyung would watch him dress quietly, thinking that Minhyung was asleep. Youngho kissing both his eyelids, then his nose, then his lips, before stalking out of the room with the last vestiges of nightfall remaining to keep Youngho protected. 

It was a tryst, indeed, but it had also been love. 


	2. Act II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And do you have a different name in it, too?” Kun asks, genuine curiosity bleeding into his voice. 
> 
> “He calls me Youngho,” Johnny repeats, staring up at the ceiling.
> 
> “Do you guys say anything in these dreams apart from your names?” 
> 
> Johnny closes his eyes, and feels the same heaviness in his chest that he’d woken up with. 
> 
> “In my dreams, I know him,” Johnny says. “In my dreams, I love him.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might hurt a bit. :c

ACT II

It’s 7:30 pm by the time Johnny makes his way back to the dorms, Taeyong bidding him goodbye after they make a stop outside campus to get some groceries and Johnny’s contact lenses. The room is quiet when he enters. Their other roommates Sicheng and Minghao are still out at football practice, but Kun is seated in the chair nearest the window, the blinds up and the overhead fan rotating at full blast. 

“Hey, Kun,” Johnny says, his body feeling the weight of the day as he collapses in his own chair. 

Kun does not reply for a few seconds, his fingers busy typing away at his laptop, usually a sign to Johnny that he will be with him shortly, he just has to finish a thought, which he does quickly, hitting the enter key before looking up and saying, “Hey Johnny,” with a strained smile on his face.

“Have you had dinner?” Johnny asks, making a note to put away the groceries he’d gotten. “I had a burger with Taeyong earlier but we can order in if you want?” 

“It’s okay, I’ll just grab something downstairs at the caf,” Kun sighs, tilting his head left and right and straightening out his back. “You okay? You look kinda beat.” 

“Had a long ass day,” Johnny says. “Oh, that reminds me, you’re a doctor--”

“I am not a doctor  _ yet _ \--”

“You’re a doctor,” Johnny says, before standing up to take his shirt off, making Kun roll his eyes. “Something really fucking weird happened today.” 

Kun turns to face him, eyes fixed on Johnny’s face and not his torso. 

“What happened?” Kun asks. 

“I was in so much fucking pain earlier when I was running to class,” Johnny says. “And right before I bumped into a dude, the pain came from here,” Johnny continues, looking down at his abdomen. 

On the right lower quadrant sits his birthmark, a long mark shaped like an island, about seven centimeters in length, and two in width, the skin over it darker, a little raised. His mother had told him he’d been born with it. 

“And it hurt all the way to here,” Johnny says, gesturing to his side where he feels might be near his right kidney. 

“Oh my god,” Kun says, rising immediately. “Lie down. Do you feel like you’re nauseated? Did you throw up? Did you run a fever at all today?” 

Johnny can’t help but laugh a little at Kun’s concern. Even if Kun is still in Pre-Med, his instincts already know the right questions to ask -- a given really, since he’s part of the fourth generation of Atenean doctors in his family. 

Johnny walks over to his bed and lies down, Kun leaning over him and making him bend his knees as Kun percusses and palpates his abdomen. 

“Does it hurt when I press down here?” Kun asks, his hands adding pressure to his birthmark. 

Nothing. Not even an echo of pain. 

“Nope,” Johnny says. Kun makes him turn on his side, gently taking Johnny's thigh and pulling it back in the hopes of eliciting a response, but nothing. He sits up in Kun's direction and Kun rests one hand on his flank, while the other forms a fist and punches against the hand Kun has splayed on Johnny's side. Still nothing.

“If you were to rate your pain from one to ten, ten being so excruciating you can’t even move, what would have ranked it?” Kun asks, putting his hands on his hips and frowning. Johnny smiles. He really does sound like a doctor already. 

“Dude, I’m telling you that was like, Harry Potter around Lord Voldemort kind of searing pain,” Johnny elaborates, hissing through his teeth like the imitation of a sizzle will help Kun in any way. “Like my side was being ripped to shreds and I was gonna blackout, and then it was gone,” Johnny says in one breath. “When Mark Lee helped me up it kind of just ebbed away.” 

“Mark Lee?” Kun asks, confusion evident on his face.

“Oh, the guy I like totaled on my way to class,” Johnny says. “God, Kun, you won’t believe the day I've had.”

Kun sits down on his own bed now that he’s pretty much ruled out that Johnny doesn’t have like, a ruptured appendix or kidney or something. 

“Remember I told you about those dreams I keep having?” Johnny asks, stretching out on the twin bed that is significantly too short for him, his feet dangling off the edge. 

“The ones where you cosplay some ancient guy and a hot dude just stares at you while he fondles his sword?” Kun asks, laughing, and Johnny throws his turtle plushie at his roommate. 

“Excuse me! God, you’re just as bad as Taeyong,” Johnny groans, covering his face with his hands. “I’m not telling you anymore. You’re just gonna call me crazy.” 

“No, no, sorry,” Kun laughs. “Please go on, I’ll shut up, I swear.” 

Johnny is skeptical, but he also really needs to run this by someone else. He feels like he’s losing his fucking mind. 

“So in the dream, I’m calling out to this guy, right? I’ve seen him enough times that his face doesn’t feel like a dream anymore, but like, I know him,” Johnny says, tugging at the hem of his shirt, averting his eyes to avoid the judgment he assumes is in Kun’s eyes. “Kun, I saw him in the flesh today. In my dreams, his name is Minhyung. Today, he spoke to me with the same voice and the same face and told me his name was Mark Lee.” 

Kun stares at Johnny, and Johnny finds that he can’t read Kun’s expression. 

“Minhyung?” Kun repeats, like he’s trying the name on for size, like he’s considering buying something but deliberating if it’s worth it. Johnny frowns, but says, “Yeah. In my dreams, that’s what his dream self is called.” 

“And do you have a different name in it, too?” Kun asks, genuine curiosity bleeding into his voice. 

“He calls me Youngho,” Johnny repeats, staring up at the ceiling.

“Do you guys say anything in these dreams apart from your names?” 

Johnny closes his eyes, and feels the same heaviness in his chest that he’d woken up with. 

“In my dreams, I know him,” Johnny says. “In my dreams, I love him.” 

⚔⚔⚔

Minhyung’s days take on a golden hue as they blur from one into the next. He awakes at dawn, consistently, his body attuned to the movements of the sun and the moon from years of rigid habit. He will make his bed, stretch out, bring his hands to the ground by his feet, and prepare to step back into the training fields. 

On this particular morning, Minhyung does not expect a summons, but the rasp of the door knocker twice alerts him to a change in the day’s proceedings. 

Minhyung leaps out of bed and stalks over to the door barefoot, the black marble under his feet cold in the morning air. He pulls the door open to find one of the queen’s handmaidens in front of him. 

“General Lee,” Yerim says. “The Queen requests your presence in the Great Hall for this morning’s meal. She said you shall resume training when the sun is high, but that you are to follow me for now.” 

Minhyung bows in acknowledgment. 

“Will I have a chance to--”

“I will wait in the courtyard, General. Please take your time. Her Majesty said for you to not rush,” Yerim finishes. 

“Thank you, handmaiden,” Minhyung replies, waiting for her to acknowledge his response and leave before he closes the door and scrambles to freshen up. This is not entirely unprecedented. He has shared meals with the queen before, especially after battles won, but it has been a while since he has received a summons for a morning meal with her. He calms his heart. 

He selects a green suit, the color for when they are at peace, and thinks that perhaps he can get away with being cheeky for now. He makes quick work, washing his face and cleaning his teeth before stepping into the clothes and brushing his hair back, working some of the pomade that he’d purchased at the market last week. Even if it is the morning meal and no formalities are expected, Minhyung insists on the effort out of respect for himself and for the company he will keep today. 

He meets Yerim at the courtyard, and she rises silently as they make their way towards the Great Hall where the queen takes her meals, and in times of celebration, holds banquets. The walk is quiet, but pleasant. He carries Griever with him, his sword sheathed at his side. There is no place that Minhyung goes that Griever does not follow. 

Despite the lavishness of the palace of Attolia, Minhyung has found that the queen is not prone to the gaudy tastes of her ancestors. She is a giving ruler, kind to her servants and her handmaidens and the court. The people see her as merciful, wise. When her husband, Prince Park Bo-gum had been found to be stealing from the court and consorting with other women, she had deemed a divorce and his exile more apt than his beheading. This earned her favor with the people. 

This morning, the queen is dressed down in a simple yellow lace adorning her shoulders. No corset, no petticoat. This is the Queen Regnant Minhyung knows. 

“Minhyung,” Queen Joohyun says pleasantly, her hand out to beckon him closer and take the seat next to her. 

_ There is too much food to break this fast _ , Minhyung thinks, but he bows her in presence, responding with “My Queen,” with a hand to his chest. 

She waves off his formalities and makes him sit down. “Enough of that,” she says, shoving a plate of sausages close to the plain white plate set in front of Minhyung. “Eat!” 

He laughs at her eagerness and tries to politely tell her that he can serve himself. He is no longer the four-year-old orphan that she’d first taken in, back when she was only a princess. 

“How are you, Minhyung?” Queen Joohyun asks as he starts to chew. “I worry about you daily.” 

“I will finish this war for you, My Queen,” Minhyung says as solemnly as he can around a mouthful of bread that he barely chews in his haste to respond to her. 

“Slow down, you’re going to choke on your food,” Queen Joohyun tuts, pouring him orange juice from a crystal pitcher that no doubt costs more than his life. “That isn’t what I’m talking about. How are  _ you _ ?” 

She reaches over and taps at Minhyung’s temple with her index finger. 

“My Queen, I haven’t trained for twenty-one years for you to doubt me,” Minhyung says, his voice dropping. He is speaking out of turn, he knows, but when he was young, he had had none of the filters he has in place now. She had always hated that he’d learned to put them up. 

“I don’t doubt your skill, Minhyung,” she says, slicing through an apple swiftly before setting it down next to the plate. Minhyung sometimes forgets that she is almost as skilled with a blade as he is. “I worry about your heart.” 

Minhyung tries to steady his breath. What does his heart have to do with anything? 

“Oh, my beloved,” Queen Joohyun says softly. “Did you really think that anything you did could escape my eye?” 

Minhyung keeps his eyes fixed on the plate before him. He lowers his utensils slowly so as not to let them clatter on the table. He risks a glance at her. There is no anger in her eyes. 

“My Queen—“

“My Sword,” she says, reaching out with her hand to press on the back of his lightly. “I know exactly how great your sacrifices are for me.” 

Minhyung is shaking, fear coursing through him for the first time in a very long time. Shame, absolute shame floods his gut, his chest, his head. 

She had known. 

He rises from the seat and throws himself down on the ground, his hands outstretched on the yellow cloth that trails down near her feet. 

“My Queen, forgive me! I had never intended to--”

“Minhyung!” Queen Joohyun says in surprise. “Get up from there! My goodness, get up!”

Minhyung cannot bring himself to look at her. This is his biggest transgression. She has called him to punish him. Her mercy will not extend to him, not in this instance, not when he had been seen consorting with the enemy. 

“Sit down, please,” Queen Joohyun says. “Minhyung, I’ve known. I have never held it against you. Your allegiance is with me and Attolia. This I know without a doubt.” 

Minhyung’s appetite has gone. He cannot be here. 

“You’re wondering why I never punished you,” she continues. He keeps his eyes downcast. 

“I gave you this life, and your payment for it is your own,” Queen Joohyun says. 

“It is my decision,” Minhyung says. 

“Is it really when you had only one option?” she says. 

“I could have left, I could have betrayed you,” Minhyung says. “Why did you put so much trust in me?” 

Queen Joohyun looks at him with sad eyes. 

“Because I know you,” she replies. “And because you didn’t. You’re right that you could have, but you did not.”

Minhyung is quiet.

“I know you will best him,” Queen Joohyun. “But whatever the outcome, I will lose you either way.” 

He glances at her, his eyes full of his unasked questions. 

She reaches out to brush the hair from his eyes, like she used to when he was just a boy. For a moment, he allows the gesture to placate him. For a moment, he remembers her as someone who loves him, and not someone who forged him in fire.

“Beloved, after you survive this,” Queen Joohyun says. “You will not get out of it unscathed.” 

⚔⚔⚔

“Minhyung,” Johnny says. His hand is reaching out. 

The wind picks up around them, the distant cheering from behind Johnny and behind Minhyung secondary to the noise of the strong breeze between them. 

Minhyung stands in front of him in light armor, not even a helmet on. His expression hardens, and Johnny can’t recognize him. 

_ Drop your weapons. Leave with me. See me. I still love you. _

“Youngho,” Minhyung rasps out, and Johnny registers the name. Distantly, he knows that is him. 

There isn’t much time for speaking, Johnny knows. His arms move like he’s in a trance, his body his own but also not his own. His hands are on his sword, and he’s unsheathing the blade as the sun paints the sky pink and purple. 

He remembers the same morning, all those years ago, as he had made his way back to Gerota after leaving Minhyung’s chambers, scampering away like a rat as evening began to fade into morning. 

_ A man he’d considered treason for _ , his thoughts coming in like a wave. _ A man he considered starting a war over.  _

But no, the war did not start with them. It started with greed that was not their own. All he had wanted was to steal Minhyung away, but Johnny had known that if he had, Minhyung would not have come along. Johnny loved Minhyung, and Minhyung loved Attolia. 

Time moves differently, things slow, things quicken, but suddenly there is a blade in his side and Minhyung on the other end of it, and Johnny knew it was coming despite being out of breath, despite having given his all, and there is flesh and guts and blood and pain, pain, pain in his side. He looks down and he has dropped his sword and there is a hand on his neck and crying, a broken sound, and arms, and hands and Johnny feels himself grow colder, and Minhyung is crying, crying, he is crying so much. Johnny reaches out to touch Minhyung’s face, blood smearing on his cheek, tears diluting the rivulets. 

“Youngho,” Minhyung cries out. “Gods, forgive me. Please let him forgive me!” 

“Johnny!” 

Johnny jolts awake, a hand on his shoulder making his eyes fly open to see Kun hovering above him. His heart is hammering against his ribcage, and his head is killing him. 

“Johnny, what the fuck?” Kun hisses. “Are you okay? You were crying in your sleep.”

Johnny brings his hand to his face and finds that his cheeks are wet. His consciousness sits half with him and half on the field centuries away. 

“Minhyung,” Johnny says, the name no longer foreign on his tongue. 

"What happened?" Kun says.

"He--he killed me," Johnny says. "He had to do it, otherwise I would have had to kill him, and. He was crying at the end of it."

Kun takes a seat next to Johnny, clearly trying to be patient, trying to comprehend why Johnny can't stop fixating it on a boy in his head.

"He said, 'Please let him forgive me'," Johnny says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to clear the last of his tears and his sleep from them.

"Why do I keep seeing Mark fucking Lee in my head, Kun? I don't even know the guy," Johnny groans, his frustration starting to wear at him. "I'd never met him save for yesterday. I feel like I might be losing my mind."

Kun sighs and faces the fan away from Johnny and toward the window like he does when he feels like having a cigarette illegally. They're not supposed to smoke in the university dorm, but given that they live in the basement floor, and their dorm president had long resigned himself to their non-compliance to the dorm rules, Kun's never really been too much of a stickler for the law. One of the many, many things Johnny likes about him.

Kun lights one up, takes a drag, and says, "Not gonna lie dude, I'm starting to worry about your mental health here.” He pauses, takes another long drag, and exhales before continuing. “But I also know that there are way too many things in this world that can and do happen without full human comprehension, and this might be one of them."

"You're about to enter medical school on a full ride and you're telling me that I might be suffering something that isn't psychiatric in nature?" Johnny asks. Kun has always been sort of an enigma to him. This just adds to it.

"Listen, my dad had a patient on the brink of death suddenly self-extubated himself and the man could breathe on his own," Kun says. "They ran a chest x-ray and none of the pneumonia that he'd had the entire hospital stay had remained. We only do so much with our hands. The rest is up to the cosmos, or God, or Buddha, whatever you choose to call it."

Johnny takes a cleansing breath.

"I feel like I should talk to him, but that will just make me seem like an even crazier person," Johnny says.

"Hey," Kun says, a puff of smoke escaping from his nostrils making him look like Mushu from Mulan. "You never know. Maybe you can open with 'you're the man from my dreams' and see where that gets you?"

Johnny is starting to run out of plushies to throw at his roommate's head.

"What! I am giving you  _ advice _ and you're refusing to take it," Kun says, moving his hand away lest the stuffed toy catch fire from his cigarette. "Fucking suit yourself."

"Oh my god, you're literally the worst advice-giver ever," Johnny groans.

"I am the wisest person you fucking know, excuse you," Kun says. The smell of the Marlboro Blacks he's smoking wafts over to Johnny's side and he reaches out for one just cos it's really One of Those Days.

"When's your next class?" Johnny asks as Kun hands him the lighter.

"Not for another 5 hours, so thanks for waking me up three hours earlier than I had intended," Kun says, but he's joking and Johnny just rolls his eyes at him.

"Listen, I just got brutally murdered at the hands of someone my dream-self was in love with who looks like a fucking freshman in this school that I've only ever crossed paths with once," Johnny says, taking a drag and feeling the nicotine hit. He doesn't smoke often, really only does when he and Kun cross over to Catina opposite campus to grab a bucket of beer and unwind. "Give me a goddamn break."

Kun reaches down for the empty Bacardi bottle that is filled with their nasty cigarette butts. It's disgusting and they should really throw it out, but they figure hey, they've filled three of these bad boys up already, why not just keep them all in one place till graduation like a horrible relic to the lung capacity they'd squandered away in their youth?

Johnny has only one class today so he figures he can stroll around campus to check out the book fair and see if--

Hold on.

Books.

Johnny throws the covers off of him and scrambles to pull his Politics and Governance readings out of his folder. His hands are shaking as he shuffles the pages looking for the course syllabus, flipping to the third page and seeing the familiar words right there.

The Attolian-Gerotan War.

_ Attolia. _

Minhyung was from Attolia.

Why the fuck is Johnny's subconscious decided to latch on to this on this so much?

He has other things to do, he's got other readings he needs to tackle, but instead, he's losing sleep over this connection he has to his dream self and this boy, and what Mark Lee has to do with all of it.

Kun's at the door with his towel and shower caddy in hand, and he pauses.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Kun says, frowning.

"I think I might have," Johnny says, as he stares at the name Minhyung, the fighter of Attolia, right there, printed in the photocopy of his history readings that he's never touched before.

⚔⚔⚔

It is too cold out. 

The wind is biting on his face as Minhyung rides out toward Miden Field, the massive expanse of land that is the valley between Attolia and Gerota. His hands are steady on the leather reigns as Dowon gallops across the rippling grass. The sun is coming up, the peach and pink of the sky like the watercolors that he’d watched the children work with during their tuition in the schools scattered within the citadel. 

His fur-lined coat rests heavy and uncomfortable around his shoulders, trailing down behind him, held in place by the silver clasp by his clavicles. All week he has trained with his armor on, gifted to him by Chanyeol himself. Before he had departed, Queen Joohyun had held him close. He thought he’d seen tears, but it was all a trick of the light. 

“I shall see you when you return, Minhyung,” she had said. All conviction, not a trace of hesitation. 

As he leaves the cheering crowd, the remainder of the Royal Guard standing at attention as he passes, Minhyung thinks about the fighters they have lost, the crushing blow of their wheat fields being burned down, their people going hungry. Their numbers have dwindled, their spirits broken. Gerota is no better. 

Attolia had given them the chance to surrender, and instead, Gerota in her fury had retaliated with what was left of her.

So today they send in the last of Gerota’s strength in the form of their best fighter. 

The figure in the distance becomes clearer and clearer as Minhyung approaches. He will make quick work of this fight, and by sunset, there will be a funeral pyre in Gerota’s main square, and Minhyung will be in the Great Hall of Attolia to celebrate the end of the war.

There is no other outcome that he can see. 

Youngho has his helmet on, the Gerotan silver glinting in the rising sun, the horsehair that lines it sticking out at the top. 

Three years. Three years since he’d last seen this man since he last watched Youngho slip out of his room and slink away back to his homeland. Not a word or a whisper from him since, not even as the war-ravaged both their countries and they started losing their men and women to the mindlessness of wanting to annex land and take resources and subjugate people. Youngho had known not to risk it. They had at least gotten  _ something _ right.

Minhyung has seen Youngho’s face behind his eyelids every night since the Queen Regnant had given her directive. He has trained himself to control his breathing, to steady his hands, to dispel any notion that he will feel the same way he used to. The Youngho of his memories is not the person he will be fighting today. 

But he cannot help the shuddering breath that escapes through his lips in a cloud or the racing of his heart.

They have never faced each other in battle, only just on the peripheries. Stories of their respective royal armies falling to the commands of both sides of the war. All Minhyung has had in those three years are stories of Youngho’s victories and very few of his losses. This is all Minhyung could allow himself to hear of Youngho. 

And yet here he is now, the Champion of Gerota sent to meet his only equal in the form of General Lee Minhyung. 

Minhyung wonders, as he watches Youngho take his helmet off and Dowon trots to a stop several feet from his former lover, if the historians would remember them both, or just the winner. 

Certainly, nothing about their love will be written. 

Minhyung will return home triumphant and Youngho’s parents will wail into the evening and no one will know that once, once in the tapestry of their lives, Minhyung had loved General Seo Youngho, the greatest fighter that Gerota had ever seen. 

Minhyung climbs down from his horse and Youngho follows suit, the grey of his tunic dull in the early morning light, the silver shining as he moves. This close, Minhyung can almost recognize him. Youngho has always been handsome, the philtrum of his lips unlike anyone Minhyung has ever laid his eyes on. Minhyung secures his sword at his side, held in place with leather straps and the gold buckles. His thumb brushes against the pommel, the engraved lion rough on Minhyung’s skin. 

Youngho does not look like the man he remembers. There is a scar that runs the length of his cheek, over his left eye, a faint line through his eyebrow. Youngho’s eyes are harder than Minhyung remembers, the circles under them deeper and darker than when Minhyung had gently stroked over his handsome features, many, many moons ago. Minhyung knows that Youngho is their last defense, and he is strong, but Gerota has sent him like a lamb for slaughter.

The wind picks up. 

Minhyung takes a breath. 

“Youngho,” he shouts, and his voice dances over to the warrior that stands before him in silver armor, his tanned arms at his sides as Youngho holds his sword in his right hand and his shield in his left. 

“Minhyung,” Youngho responds. His voice is deeper than Minhyung remembers. This man is not the man that he had known under the shroud of nightfall. Minhyung sees him for the first time in light and he finds that he does not know him. This is Gerota’s fighter, the champion of Queen Kang Seulgi. A weapon, just like him. 

“If I die today,” Youngho says. “Remember me well.” 

This incenses Minhyung to a degree. They know nothing of fighting, but they know each other’s physical capabilities in a different context. Minhyung has bested him even then, but a clash of teeth and chasing release are wildly different from what is tasked to them today. 

Minhyung quiets his mind, brings his _kontos_ pointer-down, and stabs it into the ground by his feet. 

“Today we bring a close to the war, Youngho,” Minhyung says, loud and deep. “Nothing else matters. Now enough. Let us finish this.” 

Minhyung rushes forward as he unsheathes Griever with his left hand and lunges forward. Gerotans will think he is foolish for going into battle with no helmet and only the lightest of armor, but it is his agility, his ability to move lightning-quick that gives him the advantage over many of the men and women who try to cross him. Blunt force and raw strength are nothing when you know just how quickly you can strike, and where exactly to do so. 

Metal clangs against metal as Youngho side-steps left, right, leans back when Minhyung cuts through the air, nearly missing his jugular. Yongho’s sword is thinner than his, lighter, double-edged. Gerotan steel polished almost to whiteness, the blade glinting as Youngho’s elbow bends before he attacks forward. Minhyung spins out of the way, his back to Youngho momentarily, and he feels the rush, the way his body moves. Dance like water. Dance like fire. Minhyung ducks for cover, Youngho’s sword heavy on his shield while Minhyung sweeps his own across the ground, trying to catch Youngho’s calves, the metal guards strapped in place with leather tied tightly around his legs. 

Youngho moves nothing like Chanyeol except for his reach, his long-limbs giving him the advantage of extending much further than Minhyung, who needs to get closer in order to make his moves count. Minhyung’s breathing is loud to himself as sweat begins to pool at his forehead, down the sides of his face. Youngho frowns as he tries to find an opening, and Minhyung makes his mind think double-time as his eyes flit about trying to read Youngho’s next step. 

Minhyung recoils from a blow to his face with Youngho’s elbow and nearly falls to the ground. This man is twice his weight and a good head taller but all Minhyung knows now is  _ Finish this, finish this _ . He watches as Youngho drops to his knees and rolls out of the way when he brings his pointer to aim at Youngho’s eyes. 

This is a man whose body Minhyung had known intimately, back when their young bodies gave under the slightest want, the lightest touch; back when their impressionable bodies fed into desire with the relaxed curiosity of wanting so much for themselves, wanting so much of each other. His lips have traced the arms and the muscles that Youngho uses now to deal damage to Minhyung. 

He watches as Youngho dodges his blows with his shield, feels the vibration of Griever onto the polished metal nearly shake his arm out of its socket, the ache of it excruciating. The sun has made its ascent into the sky fully, and the heat from it has made the cold of the early morning dissipate. 

Minhyung’s lungs are straining under his movement as they go blow for blow, but Minhyung has to keep moving if he intends to tire Youngho out. They dance for what feels like hours, the ground beneath them now softened under their feet, the crushed grass and the dirt making movement sluggish. Minhyung almost wishes they had fought on Tirad Pass instead, but this thought leaves him instantly as he feels the edge of Youngho’s shield dig into the armor his abdomen, before he’s sent flying off to the side. He risks a glance down and sees that his armor has dented. 

The longer they fight, the more Minhyung feels his momentum build. He can see that he is too quick for Youngho, who is stronger but slower, his movements beginning to slack. There is blood pouring into Youngho’s mouth from where Minhyung had managed to deal a blow to his head with the pommel of Griever. 

He can see the crimson slip in between Youngho’s teeth as he bares them, as they circle around each other before Minhyung crouches low and springs up, momentarily higher than Youngho stands, aiming for the dip in Youngho’s clavicle before Youngho blocks him with his shield and counters immediately with his sword slashing in an arc in quick succession.

Minhyung does not expect the fire that rips open his right bicep, making him stumble, using Griever to hold himself up as he skids to a halt, the grass catching and crushed under his boots. Youngho is running towards him, and Minhyung ignores the pain and the blood gushing forth from his arm as he steps right and stabs forward with his sword. 

It is here that Minhyung truly comes alive, now that he has been reminded of his humanity. It makes something savage awaken inside of him, and he is reminded as he watches Youngho’s smile disappear that Siwon had called him Lionheart for a reason. 

Minhyung feels like an animal let out of its cage as he runs forward and brings his sword up to aim for Youngho’s neck, and feints right and steps left, Youngho’s body weight throwing him off balance as Minhyung’s blade narrowly misses. Minhyung feels his shoulder strain under the force of Youngho’s shield on the joint and he cries out, pulling his shoulder back to move away from it. 

This close, he can hear Youngho’s laughter, and it is cruel, unlike the low rumble of his tenor that Minhyung remembers. 

Anger flares in his chest when he spins out of the way, lunging forward with Griever to slash at the back of Youngho’s armor. 

“They are as quick as they said you were, Little Lion,” Youngho grunts as he pulls back. 

Minhyung watches him closely, tracks him with his eyes as he watches for which foot Youngho favors to launch off the ground with it, studies his tells, where Youngho’s eyes go before he strikes with his sword.

“You have no right to call me that!” Minhyung shouts in response. 

Minhyung is relentless like this. In his mind’s eye, all he sees is the red of the viciousness of this three-year-long war, the red of Queen Joohyun’s dress as she gave him his directive. Youngho fights with everything he has left, and Minhyung suspends all that he knows of the man in order to remember: it is his life or Youngho’s. His life or Attolia’s future. 

He is not the crown prince, but heavy is the burden on his head regardless. 

His legs scream at him as he rolls away once again, the rocks on the field beginning to be unearthed the longer this battle drags on. He watches as Youngho crouches low, keeps the center of gravity as close to the ground as possible in order for him to move and catch Minhyung better, and Minhyung should be watching his hands, but instead, he is looking at Youngho’s face, and on it, for just a moment that catches in the sunlight, Minhyung sees it: apprehension. 

Fear. 

A split-second in which Youngho’s confidence wavers. He’s tired. Minhyung can tell. 

This is his chance. 

“Is that all you have left, General Seo?” Minhyung calls out. He feels drunk on this power, dizzy with it as he runs forward, dropping his shield and his sword and taking the  _ kontos _ as he gains traction. Youngho does not expect the spear. He has his arms up, shield to block and sword pointed directly at him.

Later, years later, Minhyung will remember this moment, play it over in his head over and over until his days begin to lead into his eternal rest. 

He will remember the way movements became not of his own anymore, the spirit of the gods before him, the spirit of the Attolians that built with their hands the grand land he lay his life on the line for filling him with a power that he had not known he could possess. 

Youngho’s face where the lapse had shown his fear is now is devoid of emotion. Cold, serene the way Minhyung feels as the moment stretches out. He is bursts of power, an immovable force. Youngho is strong and beautiful and truly moves like the best of the Gerotans that Minhyung has faced. 

But Minhyung is faster, and in a split second the minutes they spend in fight are narrowed down into this singular moment, when Minhyung finds the one opening in Youngho’s armor where front and back plates meet, pulled up and away from the metal that protects Youngho’s lower half, a sliver of weakness that Minhyung exploits, right there near Youngho’s pelvis. The force tears through and through.

Minhyung has taken lives before, blood spilled on his killer’s hands with the precision that only a child of Attolia can accomplish. The give of skin and flesh under the sharpest of spears is simple, supple like a blade through silk. 

Minhyung’s  _ kontos  _ enters Youngho’s body, and Youngho falls to his knees. 

The clatter of Youngho’s sword on the grass is muffled, and Youngho is hunched over, both hands wrapped around the wooden pole that is lodged into his right side, exiting his flank. 

Blood, so much blood spills out and stains the grey tunic, into the black of Youngho’s trousers. 

There is a ringing in Minhyung’s ears as Youngho looks up at him, and his lover is smiling as the life trickles out of him. 

It is finished. 

Thunder rolls in the distance.

The polearm remains lodged in Youngho’s belly, the pointer doused in red as it sticks out from behind him. Slowly, Youngho’s back arches and he falls, landing on the torn up grass. His blood runs in rivers under him, and the dirt turns to mud. Youngho’s hands remain on his abdomen, cradling the intrusion helplessly as he lies on his back, his eyes open, frantic, raised to the sky.

Minhyung’s body is frozen, his mind pulling back on the locks that it had set in place for this battle like the water dam by their rivers being destroyed by the unrelenting typhoons. 

It is then that it hits him like a wave.

Regret. 

Regret floods the caverns of his heart and replaces the air inside his lungs as Minhyung watches Youngho struggle to breathe, struggle to move, his red, red hands scrambling across the grass and the blood and the dirt for purchase while his life rushes outside of him. 

In the distance, Attolia cheers. The horns sound and the drumbeats play their songs of victory, the screaming of the people that Minhyung had given his entire life to defend. The noise is deafening even from where he stands. The messengers have seen enough to know that the battle is won.

Minhyung wills his feet to move, one foot. And then another. And again, as he rushes forward and kneels beside Youngho, the cream-colored linen of his trousers soaking up the blood that spills out from Youngho’s wound. 

Youngho’s face is pale as his heart struggles to pump blood out and out and out. His legs are folded beneath him uselessly, his body crumpled like a straw doll that has seen better days. 

His eyes find Minhyung’s own, and Youngho smiles, his blood still bathing his teeth. Minhyung crouches over Youngho’s body, the first of Minhyung’s sobs wracking through his own as he attempts to pass off his gestures like that of a killer ensuring his prey is dead. He presses his hand to Youngho’s neck, not unlike the nights when Youngho had kissed him, and feels a thready pulse there. Minhyung’s hand trembles as he passes his fingertips over Youngho’s lips--his lips, his beautiful, supple lips; lips that had tasted like pomegranates the first time Youngho had devoured him. There is barely any breath left.

Minhyung is crying, crying out in anguish as his scream remains trapped in his throat. 

He has won the war, and lost everything in turn. 

Wildly, Minhyung imagines cradling Youngho in his arms. He cannot even mourn him properly. He remains kneeling beside him, but the tears take over his body as Minhyung folds himself over the ground, his right hand on Youngho’s armor, over where his heart lies; his left hand covers his mouth, uncaring of the mud and the blood on it, his wailing hidden from view to the spectators in the distance.

“Youngho,” Minhyung wails to himself, rocking himself back and forth on the ground next to his lover. “Youngho, forgive me! Gods! Gods I beg you!” 

“Minhyung,” Youngho says. _His hands are covered with cherry wine, that is all_ , Minhyung’s mind supplies. _That is all. Just cherry wine_. “Remember me.”

Youngho’s hand reaches up to cradle Minhyung’s face, thumb wiping away a tear that leaves something cold in its wake.

Minhyung feels like his heart is a bird’s broken wing. 

“Youngho,” Minhyung says as Youngho’s breathing becomes more ragged. Youngho continues to smile at him, and all at once, Minhyung sees him again, the boy he had loved, the boy who took him apart, who made him whole. “Forgive me.”

Minhyung has not prayed to the old gods in almost a decade, but Minhyung cries out with his last desperate plea. 

“Let him remember me,” Minhyung howls into the ground as he bows his head to the mud, his fists digging into the dirt as the wind around them begins to blow harder, the clouds coming over the rising sun and drowning the light out in grey. “By the old gods, I beg you! Let him remember me and let him forgive me!”

Minhyung takes every last shard that remains of his love for a man who had once, and only once, asked him to run away with him, and offers all of it to the gods that his queen and his people so fervently pray to, and begs the Fates for another chance. Anything. One day. Just one more day with him. 

There are tales of reincarnation, stories that the priests tell to warn people of the beyond, what happens in the afterlife.  _ Please let him remember me _ , he prays, though to which god, he knows not.  _ Bring him back. _

“Please,” Minhyung cries, Youngho’s hand falling off to the side, his skin now cold, his body lifeless. Above them, the heavens split open. A torrent of rain. “Please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean
> 
> u gotta remember this is a reincarnation au? :)


	3. Act III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Is that Minhyung?" Kun says, seeming genuinely curious, which makes Johnny feel admittedly a little less unhinged, knowing that he's not the only one who's got some sort of investment in all of this.
> 
> "Yeah," Johnny says.
> 
> "Can you pull up Mark's Facebook?" Kun says, pulling his chair closer to Johnny's desk.
> 
> Johny does so, toggling over to his profile photo where Mark is laughing. He tries to click for a different photo, and finds one, a photo taken last year where Mark is unsmiling. Kun lets out another low whistle. Johnny pulls the tab out and sets both web pages side by side in a split-screen.
> 
> "Holy fucking shit, holy shit Johnny," Kun says. "It really is the two of you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the last chapter + the epilogue, because like I clearly could not shut up. 
> 
> I hope you like this one!

ACT III

Johnny falls into the rabbit hole of Googling the war and everything to do with Attolia and Gerota. He finds several websites that point him in the direction of anecdotal text, things that history had been able to preserve of the small states and a war that barely registers as a blip in history.

It is almost as if it falls to myth, but given that someone somewhere (particularly a Professor Leon Somenhalder) had decided that they wanted to dedicate their life’s work to the study of it, there remain a few accounts of what took place before both lands had been conquered by the West.

He devours the text, scouring through whatever he can find about General Seo and General Lee, when he decides to search on Google images.

Right there, on the very first row of images--Johnny’s face staring back at him.

A photograph of a painting, not even a scan of it, the singular image that remains of General Seo. He looks young, no more than 20, he thinks, dressed in a royal blue, his dark hair wavy in front and cropped short at the sides.

Youngho must have posed for this portrait, must have stood there to have a likeness of him preserved somehow. He stands proud, unsmiling, his right hand on the pommel of the very same sword he’d wielded in his dreams.

Johnny looks down and lifts his shirt up, eyes to where his birthmark sits right above his hip bone.

General Seo was fatally wounded after a vicious battle to the death between him and Attolia’s champion. Through the front, and right out the back.

The books say that Minhyung must have struck his kidney, severed several important arteries. There was no saving him. The last that they write about him is that his body had been taken back on a carriage, and later his body burned in a funeral pyre.

There are more photos of General Lee, and all of them have Mark Lee's face. There is a mural in the remains of old Attolia that had been saved, apparently, and in it is the exaggerated depiction of their final battle.

It looks nothing like Johnny's dreams, where it had just been them. In the mural, Minhyung stands with his spear held over his head, his sandaled foot resting on Youngho's chest as if he is the angel Michael and Youngho is the snake he has crushed. They are surrounded by a mass of people, and in the background, what Johnny assumes is supposed to be the Queen Regnant of Attolia.

Johnny pushes his chair back, trying to make sense of it all.

He's startled back to reality when he hears Kun whistle behind him, and say, "Wow, you actually look pretty good in a royal getup."

Johnny cranes his neck back to look at his roommate who is staring at his laptop, at the photo that has both Minhyung's and Youngho's portraits side by side on the web page.

"Is that Minhyung?" Kun says, seeming genuinely curious, which makes Johnny feel admittedly a little less unhinged, knowing that he's not the only one who's got some sort of investment in all of this.

"Yeah," Johnny says.

"Can you pull up Mark's Facebook?" Kun says, pulling his chair closer to Johnny's desk.

Johny does so, toggling over to his profile photo where Mark is laughing. He tries to click for a different photo, and finds one, a photo taken last year where Mark is unsmiling.

Kun lets out another low whistle. Johnny pulls the tab out and sets both web pages side by side in a split-screen.

"Holy fucking shit, holy shit Johnny," Kun says. "It really is the two of you."

Johnny's head is buzzing. None of this makes sense. Not a single lick of it makes sense to him.

"What happened to Minhyung after the battle?" Kun asks, still leaning in, his eye darting between the photo of Mark and Minhyung.

Johnny's eyes trace over the features of the young general.

"He'd gone back to Attolia, and had been celebrated as a war hero," Johnny says. "He'd left Attolia about two years later, just took off into the woods west of the land. He'd never been heard from again."

Johnny has his own suspicions of what truly happened, but he allows himself a small hope that Minhyung had grown to old age, had lived long and happy. That's what he tells himself at this point, anyway.

Kun is silent, his expression held in a frown.

"Johnny, what if these dreams are memories?" Kun asks quietly.

Johnny looks at Kun and knows he isn't joking, not this time. Johnny glances at the screen, and thinks about the dreams that have taken up the fucking real estate of his brain for the last month. He thinks about the birthmark on his abdomen, and the searing pain that he'd felt yesterday. Logically, none of these things make sense, but his mind had given him another clue the night before. It's the first time he'd actually felt, actually seen his death--or rather, Youngho's.

To the last second, Youngho had loved him.

He doesn't know how he knows, but this is the only somewhat logical explanation he can arrive at for how he feels, how he seems to know Minhyung, how now, the thought of seeing Mark is his singular focus.

He considers it--his mouse toggling over to Mark's Facebook page, hovering over the **"Add Friend"** button.

What the fuck is he even supposed to say? _Hey, I think we're reincarnated lovers, do you wanna grab lunch at Flaming Wings tomorrow?_

Jesus Christ.

"You can just start with adding him first?" Kun says as if he can hear Johnny thinking out loud, before standing up and stretching. "Alright, I'm out. Don't hole yourself up here. Just add the dude and see what happens, okay? See you after class."

And then Kun is gone, and Johnny's attention is brought fully back to the task at hand. It shouldn't be too hard, he's just adding Mark Lee on social media even though Mark has no idea who he is and why the fuck he'd be interested in Mark in the first place.

He clicks on the **“Add Friend”** button and closes the browser.

What if he decided to go back to sleep? What if he took like, fucking melatonin or something and slept more? Would he be on the field again? Would he see something else? Maybe he could ask Minhyung something, but he doubts he’d even be able to come up with a coherent question. 

_What if these dreams are memories?_

An alert on his phone goes off, and Johnny sees the notification on his Facebook app. 

There he is. Mark Lee, Facebook-officially his friend. Johnny tries not to read into it too much, the fact that it took less than five minutes for him to approve the request. He doesn’t even know what to do with this connection now that he has it.

_Does Mark dream of him, too? Does the name Youngho mean anything to him?_

Objectively, Johnny knows that this should be impossible, but the more he goes over what he knows from his dreams, what he’s read of Minhyung and Youngho, the more it starts to take shape, and he can’t shake it.

It’s as if his entire body is singing out a question and only Mark Lee holds the answers. He’s read enough about Minhyung, so now he has to learn about Mark.

Johnny hazards scrolling through Mark’s profile and finds that he’s a freshman Political Science major, active in the school organizations. He’s part of the Ateneo Musician’s Pool, it seems. He posts covers of songs on his timeline with his guitar on hand.

There are posts and posts about how the government could do better; essays critiquing the mishandling of funds. Stupid memes that shouldn’t be funny but are, shitposts about his major. 

Johnny doesn’t know what he’s looking for by doing this, really. It isn’t as if he expected Mark to be posting things about a war that no one really cared about, or a general that he’d lost in it. It’s ridiculous to try to find hints like this when he himself had never even heard of Attolia or the generals until today. 

Never mind, of course, the fact that now that Johnny’s scrolled through enough videos of Mark, he’s arrived at the conclusion that Mark is pretty cute, and by all conventions, his type. If Kun were to hear him say this, he would definitely be making fun of Johnny. 

He glances at the clock and realizes that he’s got about an hour and a half left until he has to leave for class, so he shuts his laptop down, shoves it into his backpack, and gets ready. He’ll save his delusions for later. Maybe he’ll ask Kun if he’s up for a couple of beers, invite Yuta and Taeyong out if they’re game for it.

It’s about thirty minutes later when he’s stepping out of the dorm lobby and walking up the slope that leads into the Loyola Schools. There’s a little book fair taking place at Dela Costa that he’s been meaning to check out so he makes his way there. 

He’s always loved the campus, quiet on hazy days like these, especially in February when summer fast approaches. When Johnny glances at Bellarmine Field, he is reminded once again of the grass field in his dreams. This is really starting to grate on him.

_Get out of your head, Suh._

He cuts through Xavier Hall and makes his way through the garden to Dela Costa, allowing himself to be immersed in the buzz of students around him clumped together under the shade of Zen Garden, on the stairs to MVP. 

When he reaches Dela Costa, he realizes the grave error he’s made. 

Mark Lee sits on one of the white monoblock chairs, his knee up on the seat while he scrolls through his phone, his red t-shirt too loose on him. Johnny can’t even turn around and make a run for it because Mark glances up and makes eye contact before he can. 

“Hey!” Mark says brightly. “Welcome to the book fair!”

Johnny moves his mouth like a fish, his body sort of rooted on the spot. _Speak, loser_! Johnny thinks. 

“Uh,” Johnny says smartly. He clears his throat, trying to dislodge the frog that seems to have made its way in there. “Hi. Yeah, thanks.” 

“We’ve got a lot of the classics,” Mark says, rising from his seat and pulling out a stack of novels with yellowing pages to show Johnny. “A bunch of these were salvaged from an old library so a lot of them still have their library cards in the back if you’re into that kind of thing, but we’ve got brand new ones if you’d rather check those out.” 

Mark arranges the books out to show the titles before looking up at Johnny, and Johnny holds his gaze.

Mark pauses. 

“Hey, you’re the--Johnny Suh, right?” Mark asks. “I saw the--you know, uh, Facebook.”

Johnny feels his entire face burn up. This is so, so painfully awkward, he has no idea what the fuck he’s supposed to do to get out of this with any sort of face left. He panics, and pulls the first thing he can come up with out of his ass, and says, “Oh, just, I wanted to say sorry again for yesterday and crashing into you.” 

Johnny bites the inside of his cheek. God, that was weak even to him. 

“Oh, it’s no problem man, it happens!” Mark replies earnestly, waving him off. “I used to trip all the time around here before they started replacing the bricks on the sidewalk.” 

“I mean at least the infirmary’s in the center of campus, right?” Johnny replies, glancing down at the books. 

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask, to say anything. He feels sort of like Steve Rogers trying to deal with the Winter Soldier, wondering if Mark has some sort of amnesia that he can unlock with a few key phrases. 

“Would you happen to have history books on hand?” Johnny asks. “Or anything about some place called Attolia?” 

He waits for the pin to drop, for any sort of recognition. _Do you remember that? You were their hero?_

But nothing registers on Mark’s face, just a thoughtful look before he gestures to one of the shelves to his left that has a couple of familiar titles, and one smaller black one tucked amongst the taller textbooks. 

“There are a bunch over here, all brand new so they’re wrapped but I can open them up for you if you wanna skim through them?” Mark asks. “I’m not familiar with Attolia actually. Is that like a Greecian island or something?” 

“It was a small kingdom situated somewhere in what was ancient Middle East,” Johnny says absentmindedly. His heart sinks somewhat at the lack of any sort of familiarity Mark has to anything he’s saying. He probably has very well lost his mind. 

This man doesn’t know Johnny, even if Johnny thinks he should. 

He picks up a second-hand copy of _The Art of War_ , and decides to take that, pulling out a couple of bills to hand over to Mark before saying thank you, and leaving for his class. 

That had been a dud, a failed experiment. Johnny just really needs to get his head screwed back on straight. There are other things he needs to focus on, like fucking graduating. He walks to the classroom in Berchmans Hall and waits for the class to file in and begin, idly checking his phone and sending out a quick text to Kun, Yuta and Taeyong asking them to meet him for drinks after class. 

It’s been a strange fucking twenty-four hours, no doubt, but Johnny doesn’t think there’s any other course of action except to just let this shit go and pack it away in a box in his head to unpack later on, or throw in the ocean in his mind where all the useless knowledge and chained up demons go. 

⚔⚔⚔

Minhyung has his eyes closed as Taeil wraps a clean white strip of gauze over his right arm. Only now does the pain of his battle truly begin to set in, here in the quiet of Minhyung’s quarters as the palace physician tends to his wounds. The bleeding has stopped, mercifully after the salve and pressure had been applied.

Minhyung had bathed and the water had turned a murky red. He hadn’t realized just how many cuts Youngho had managed to inflict on him until he felt the sting of them all after he’d lathered himself down with soap.

Taeil works quickly, but with gentle hands, telling Minhyung to raise his arms up to where he can. His shoulder had had to be set back in place, not even having registered the pain of the dislocation when faced with the pain of--

“Do you think you can make it through the banquet?” Taeil asks. “I have an elixir for the pain, but you’re going to have to avoid the mead if that’s the case.” 

Minhyung looks up at him, glances at the bandage around his arm, feels the broken rib on his side. Every breath hurts, but its reason does not stop at the physical.

All Minhyung wants to do is sleep for days, bury himself under his covers and lament all the decisions he’s made to get to this point, curl up and weep and weep and weep for his transgressions. 

“I don’t need the elixir,” Minhyung says, rising gingerly in order to make his way to the cabinet. “Thank you, Taeil.”

Taeil bows low, and gathers his belongings, small vials of various colors, tinctures and salves in glass bottles and cork stoppers into the small wooden chest he had brought in, and takes his leave. 

His attendant Jaemin stands behind him to hold up the deep emerald jacket that Mark slowly eases his arms into. It takes so much time, but the bandages around his torso and the fact that he has broken bone and skin make movement extremely difficult. Nonetheless, he has to be present at the banquet. It is what is expected of him, after all. 

_Just get through tonight,_ Minhyung thinks. _Just tonight, then you can rest._

Jaemin nods as Minhyung fixes the straps that wrap around his waist to keep the jacket in place. His reflection in the polished mirror looks even worse for wear. Nothing to be done about it, really. 

He has to hurry. He is to be paraded as a hero, the Champion of Attolia, the Bringer of Peace. He will ride on his horse in the most regal clothing and listen to the crowd cheer him on, the joy on their faces triumphant and vulgar when they say that General Seo is dead because of him and he will smile and pretend that he has not lost the entirety of himself for their sake. 

The story of their love is known to him, Chanyeol, and the Queen Regnant herself, as far as he knows. To the historians who will note this, all they will know is how General Lee had bested the Fighter of Gerota. It is, after all, the winners that dictate how history is remembered. 

He takes Griever and secures it at his waist. Belatedly, Minhyung finds himself the smallest fraction of grateful that he had used the _kontos_ instead of his sword. The polearm had been wheeled away, still lodged into Youngho’s body as Minhyung watched Gerota drop to their knees in honor of their last fallen warrior.

"Thank you," Minhyung says quietly.

"You're welcome, sir," Jaemin responds. "And, thank you."

"Do you know what you're thanking me for, Jaemin?" Minhyung asks without any bite, a wry smile.

Jaemin looks taken aback.

"You're our hero," Jaemin says reverently. "You won Attolia the war. Our people can rest now, thanks to you."

It makes Minhyung nauseated. He does not want this reverence. He does not want this gratitude. He wants to undo the events of the day, wake up and pack his things and send word to Gerota that he wants to run away with Youngho.

But there is no time to grieve, not at this moment. 

He straightens his back, nods to his attendant, and stalks out of the room slowly, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from wincing too much. He cannot even fathom getting on Dowon’s saddle but Minhyung has taken his fair share of beatings before. There is no reason for him to not do so in this instance, now that his life’s greatest purpose has reached its actual peak. 

He walks out into the courtyard where his horse awaits, held in place by one of the men tasked to care for their beasts. He plants one booted foot into the stirrup and swings his leg over, leaning in slightly to stroke his gloved hand over Dowon’s mane, calming the horse before kicking in to begin his trot into the main square where the parade will begin. 

The entirety of Attolia is on the streets, thousands and thousands of people lining each side of their main walkways with various cloths in their hands. Their cheering is deafening from where Minhyung can hear them, and he makes his way to the Royal Guard gathered at the start.

Chanyeol nods to him, and Minhyung returns it, his eyes unsmiling. 

_Very well,_ Minhyung thinks. _Let’s get on with this._

Minhyung kicks at Dowon’s sides, and he struggles to stay put on his horse. He regrets not taking the elixir Taeil had offered. Perhaps it would have made breathing less agonizing, though he knows that the demons he will lie with when night falls and the banquet is over will consume him more than this physical pain. 

The crowd screams and Minhyung keeps his eyes fixed forward, his eyes glazing over the mass of bodies whose names he will never know. His misery sits like a stone in his stomach, though his posture betrays nothing--nothing of his regret, nothing of his loss, nothing of the bandaged wounds that remain hidden under his regal clothing. 

When the Royal Guard approaches the foot of the stairs that lead up to the palace, Minhyung sees the Queen Regnant standing at the landing of the sprawling stone steps. Queen Joohyun, resplendent in the green and gold of the Rubelli fabric that makes up the train of her gown, with Prince Ji-sung in her arms. Minhyung looks up at her, and remembers her words all those mornings ago. She was right. 

He’s lost everything. 

She nods at him, and Minhyung has to parse the mess of emotions that flares up inside of him. She is merciful, yes, but she is also calculating.

As much as she has raised him, there is no denying that she raised him for this purpose, and it is equal parts mesmerizing and terrifying to know that his entire life has been one calculated decision after the next. Despite the affection she may have for him, Minhyung now feels like a pig fattened up for slaughter. 

Minhyung makes the slow but steady ascent up the stairs, back ramrod straight despite the straining of his breaths from the broken rib in his side, flanked by the Royal Guard. There are drumbeats and trumpets in the distance, but all Minhyung sees is his queen, and he knows that this is the beginning of the end for him. 

It is clear that she knows it, too. 

When he reaches her, he drops to his knees, hand over his chest like he had the day she had given him his orders. 

She reaches out an elegant hand for him to take as he rises, and Minhyung is sure he fails to hide the grimace of pain as he straightens out his body. 

“Welcome home, beloved,” she whispers. 

“Your Majesty,” he responds. 

They walk across the long stone path that cuts through the royal gardens, the lush greenery around them calm and serene, belying the chaos that the warring lands have had to deal with in the years past, and the chaos yet to come as they begin to annex Gerota to Attolia. 

The kingdom will celebrate, the people spilling out and going house to house to be merry, to sing joyously the praises of the wise queen and her fighter. Inside the Great Hall, a banquet, a feast, with merrymakers and songs and dance.

The long wooden tables are pushed to the side to create a space for them to walk in. Tapestries and paintings line the walls, scenes from old wars and old rulers. Candlelight and torches and lamps fill the entire hall with a warm glow, and food lines the tables, overflowing with roast calf and pork and pies and stews and fruit on every possible surface.

People are joyous, the emotion of the room charged with the excitement of the end of the war. Minhyung wants to forget everything, wants to drown in the food and the wine and have a dreamless sleep.

There is still so much to do, and so much expected of him, but as he walks to the front to be honored by the queen and the people around him, Minhyung wonders when he will break. He is not there, not yet, but he knows it will come.

He barely registers the proceedings, his body moving of his own accord as he goes through the motions of this moment when his name will be committed to memory, passed down from mouth to mouth to paper, the historians telling generations and generations of his prowess.

Minhyung wonders how he would feel if his opponent had been anyone else. If he had had to face someone who hadn't held him close and given his heart to Minhyung. Perhaps this would be a time of true joy, unfettered and unbound by any sort of anguish save for the remembrance of their losses.

Queen Joohyun watches him closely when he takes his place next to her, his position as her most favored holding true tonight. Her Sword. Her Champion. 

There are dancers that come to stop at the front of their table, long gowns and flowing sleeves mesmerizing enough as Minhyung promptly begins to consume as much wine as he possibly can, taking a hearty gulp after every serving of roast beef and potatoes.

"Are you hurt?" Queen Joohyun asks quietly, leaning in closer to him. "Did Taeil tend to you well enough?"

"Yes, my Queen," Minhyung says. "Nothing that will take just a little time to heal."

Queen Joohyun purses her lips and lays a hand lightly on his arm. She opens her mouth but decides against what she had intended to say. Minhyung is grateful. He doubts that he would have been able to stomach whatever it was, anyway.

He plies himself with too much mead and too much of a clear liquid that tastes acrid but makes his head float when Chanyeol and the rest of the Royal Guard drag him off to their table for the evening.

Everyone is in high spirits and Minhyung can almost pretend that he is, too, can almost pretend for just the remainder of the night that he is one of them, just another person who can fade into the background and not have to face the shroud of darkness that he knows will be waiting for him once the festivities have ended.

Hours pass like time flowing down from a vessel of syrup that does not run out. A handmaiden finds him and seats herself next to him and presses her lips to his jaw, to his neck, and Minhyung allows himself to slip into the feeling as he presses his back against the chest of one of the men from the Royal Guard that had been making eyes at him all night. His senses escape him, and in the frenzy, he does not realize that he is taking the handmaiden by the hand as the man follows them to his quarters.

It is all hands and lips and sighs as Minhyung watches her deft fingers begin to undo his jacket, and the man slides his hands over his shoulders to remove it. The entire room is cast half in the warmth of light from the fireplace, the other half in darkness, over his bed. He can barely see their faces as the man takes him by the wrist.

Unbidden, Minhyung sees Youngho's face as he closes his eyes and lies down on top of the duvet over his bed. The handmaiden giggles, her breasts soft as she leans over him and tries to catch his lips in hers. He turns his face away, and her lips land on his cheek, which she must think is sweet, because she presses her lips there again, right on the mole that Youngho used to favor.

The man kneels between Minhyung's legs that are spread apart, and Minhyung's chest aches. His head is a fog like he's watching the man move with Minhyung's head stuck underwater and his eyes stinging. There are hands on his waist, hands gentle over the bandages wrapped around his body. He keeps his eyes fixed on the man, on the ripple of his muscles in the firelight.

He looks nothing like Youngho, but tonight, Minhyung will pretend. Fingers pull buttons through the holes one by one until Minhyung feels them loosen and lifts his hips up momentarily so that the man can slide his trousers off.

He has a name, Minhyung's mind supplies, but he cannot for the life of him remember what it is, and it's not important, not when his cock stands erect and the man swallows him whole in one move.

Minhyung nudges the handmaiden whose clothing has now been shed, and makes her move up, up, up to his face.

"Throw your legs over--like that," Minhyung instructs, and there he is, faced with her wetness right over his lips. He takes his arms and wraps them over her thighs as she keeps her balance on the headboard, and slides his tongue over her heat, the hot slick taste of her arousal already matting down the wiry hair over her mons pubis. She tastes like strawberries and her moans sound like a song. Minhyung's mind rings out white noise as the man takes him by the base of his cock and licks along the shaft.

Minhyung wants to not think, and this is what he will settle for. He will chase the rush of this, draw it out as long as he can, because he knows that a ghost lurks by the window, behind the curtains, and that ghost will haunt him for days and days. He wants only this right now, to not have to face it, to not have to remember that he has sins to pay penance for.

The handmaiden's legs quiver as Minhyung slides his tongue over the hardened flesh of her clitoris, her hand gripping his hair as her moans amplify the arousal he feels as his cock is enveloped in the tight hot heat of the man's mouth.

Minhyung's release is unsatisfying, his groan choked out as the handmaiden clenches her thighs around his head, her own orgasm hitting her hard enough that she quakes for several seconds, the taste of her sliding down his tongue before she clambers off of his face and collapses next to him, her breasts small and soft, pressing against his injured arm.

The man is kneeling next to him now, his own turgid cock in his fist as Minhyung watches, detached, while he strokes himself to completion and erupts on Minhyung's abdomen, some of which splatters onto his bandages. Disgusting. Youngho wouldn't have ever done that. He would have been respectful, would have avoided his bandages altogether. Youngho wouldn't have--

_Youngho._

Minhyung aches, and aches, and aches, and allows the shallow sleep to pull him under.

⚔⚔⚔

Days pass with dreamlessness, something that Johnny is grateful for. He can pretend that it was all a fluke, all just a matter of coincidences one after the other, and he comes to peace with it in time for them to actually discuss the war in his Politics and Governance class.

It does not escape Taeyong’s notice, or the class, for that matter, that he bears an uncanny resemblance to the young general who had died for Gerota. People crane their necks to look at him and tease him, and Johnny waves it off with a “Oh please, I’m much more handsome,” which makes the class laugh and the topic is dropped. 

If it fills him with a renewed sense of confusion, no one has to know about it. 

Kun won’t stop asking him about Mark Lee or if he’s dreamt of Minhyung again, and it’s starting to grate on Johnny but he keeps his irritation in check. It was all just a crazy string of events. Nothing more. All coincidence, like those photos online about how Keanu Reeves is a vampire cos they found old photos of a dude who looked just like him. 

He goes about his days and finds that he misses Minhyung. Wonders what went through his head after he’d killed Youngho. The history books don’t mention them together. For all the written works known, Youngho and Minhyung had only ever known each other as enemies. Johnny himself can’t know for sure. 

As he makes his way across the Red Brick Road and over to the Arete where the new exhibition on Attolia is being held, he wonders if he will find anything more about these two men who were thrust into an impossible situation. He wonders if he’ll recognize anything, or learn something more than what the readings and his brief manic search of webpages can tell him.

The museum is filled with a moderate amount of people milling about. There is a woman at reception who hands him a glossy flyer that has some of the pieces printed out on them, with a brief history of this tiny, almost-insignificant land and its apparently rich culture. 

There are several big pieces, entire sections of stone slabs with murals depicting war, people with spears through their chests, fire ravaging entire villages. There is a massive statue of two men locked in mortal combat, the figures locked in each other’s arms, one of their faces vicious and other, crying out in agony, his left hand bracing himself on the shoulder of the other who has his arms crushing his torso. 

Under one of the biggest lights, against the backdrop of a red wall, Johnny is taken aback by the vision of a beautiful woman with cream skin, a piercing gaze, her shoulders bare, arms covered with the rich blues and muted reds, and gold leaf on delicate flowers lining the middle and hem of her dress. He leans in closer to see the name: ‘Queen Joohyun: Queen Regnant of Attolia’ it says on the little polished plate. 

Johnny makes his way around the gallery and finds a small crowd in front of a large painting of the man he’d seen in his dreams, the actual painting that he’d seen scans of just a few weeks prior, when Minhyung’s face had been clear in his mind’s eye. 

He traces his eyes over the features of the young general. Unmistakable. Un-fucking-canny. It has to be Mark Lee. It really does. His hands begin to clam up, the hair on his back beginning to stick up on end. There is a ringing in his ears that he cannot explain.

This entire collection starts to feel equal parts foreign to him, and yet familiar. There is a pillar made of marble that Johnny sees on his way into the next room, and he swears he can almost remember the cold of it under his palm. He walks past paintings and scrolls in glass cases and weapons and his head starts to swim, like it’s too loud all of a sudden. 

Johnny becomes hyper-aware of every laugh, every remark made about this piece or that, his breathing starting to quicken. His feet take him through the gallery and he feels like he has no control because something--something is compelling him, something has taken hold, like his limbs are being pulled, magnets that cannot keep separate. 

He’s walking so quickly that the rest of the pieces are a blur to him because his heart is racing, his breathing is uneven, his mind is going and going and going, leading him to the room with the weapons and--

Mark Lee, standing right in front of a polearm looking up at the weapon that Johnny had felt speared through his torso. 

“Minhyung,” Johnny calls out. 

Mark turns around, tears in his eyes. 

The gallery falls silent. 

No one moves. No one makes a sound. 

Johnny looks at Mark and they exist in a vacuum, and all at once, the chips fall into place. Johnny feels something unravel and snap inside of his chest, tears springing to his own eyes as recognition falls over the two of them. 

“Youngho,” Mark says, his voice full of wonder, his voice echoing in the sudden silence and stillness of the room. 

“You remembered me,” Johnny replies, and his mind fills with a waterfall of a life lived long ago and the life he’s lived up until this point. He is Seo Youngho and he is Johnny Suh and his feet carry him forward, forward, until he stops in front of Mark, who looks at him with eyes brimming. 

“You came back,” Mark whispers, and he crumples as Johnny catches him in his arms, and Johnny knows him. He _knows_ him. 

“Minhyung,” Johnny says. “Mark.” 

“I didn’t think it would work,” Mark says. “I didn’t think I deserved it.” 

Johnny takes Mark’s face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away the tears that fall from Mark’s eyes, over the apples of his cheeks. 

“I thought I had squandered every chance I’d had,” Mark says, and Johnny holds him close. “I’ve been searching for you for centuries.” 

“It took a while,” Johnny chuckles. “But I’m here now.” 

Inside, a war rages, the confusion of his now-shared knowledge between himself as Youngho and himself as a twenty-five-year-old man in the twenty-first century battling to hurry up and make sense of it all. He is both a fallen warrior and literature major now, it seems. 

Mark pulls back and stares up at Johnny like he refuses to believe his eyes. He glances down at himself, at the black hoodie and the Fall Out Boy t-shirt he has on, and laughs. 

“It’s definitely comfier than what we used to have to wear,” Mark says with a shrug, and the room comes alive again, like nothing happened. 

The chatter returns, the people walking from piece to piece, glancing at their phones and taking photos of the artifacts, and Johnny and Mark look at each other before joining the throng of other students who are there taking notes down for their classes. 

They find themselves in front of Griever, whose place is under four lights in a glass case, unexposed to the environment. Its pommel still has the lion engraved into it, and Johnny remembers how it used to sit on Minhyung’s mantel, under which there would be a pleasant crackling from the fireplace. He watches Mark rake his eyes over his old weapon, the one that had been an extension of himself, the one whose pommel had struck Youngho on his mouth a lifetime ago.

“This is a replica,” Mark says, looking at it, amused. “The lion looks different.”

“What do you mean?” Johnny asks, frowning, looking closer. Mark narrows his eyes, his tongue peeking out as he looks closer at the sword that followed Minhyung wherever he went. Minhyung points to the label that states that it is, in fact, just a copy.

“Griever’s gone,” Mark says, turning sharp eyes to Johnny. “Tossed it somewhere no one would find it. I’m actually impressed; they did a pretty good job, but it isn’t her.” 

Johnny nods, understanding starting to take shape in his mind, wonder filling the spaces as his mind struggles to bridge what he knows and what he doesn’t about the man standing next to him.

It’s a strange sensation, living in this body, moving the way that he does now, everything the same and also new. They walk around the gallery and Johnny learns about Mark, about the parents and the family he is born into. Mark tells him about the family dog, Patch, who is a poodle-shih tzu mix, the older brother that he has who works about an hour away from the city.

Johnny tells him about his mother who raised him by herself, who worked hard to put him through school, who found someone who was willing to put Johnny through his Jesuit education on a scholarship. He tells Mark about his friends Kun and Taeyong and Yuta, and Mark pulls his phone out to show him the photos of his blockmates Jaemin, Donghyuck and Jeno, all of whom happen to be in the musician’s pool with him. 

Johnny laughs, nudges Mark on the shoulder and says, “Who would have thought your learning the lyre would sort of come back in some way too?” while Mark blushes a bit. 

They walk out of the gallery and into the sinking sunlight near the parking lot, and Johnny takes a pause, glancing at Mark who is looking ahead, and then looking at him. Sunset always bathes the Ateneo campus in gold, and the way the light hits Mark makes Johnny’s breath catch. This is his Minhyung, the love of his life, the one who took his away, the one he forgives. 

And yet this is also Mark Lee, someone he has yet to learn about, and wants to keep learning about. In this moment, Johnny etches Mark’s startled expression at him to memory, and pulls what he remembers, the two faces superimposing on each other. Minhyung, of the evening; Mark Lee, of the daylight. 

Johnny remembers most clearly the cry of anguish, the ache that he’d felt as his breaths began to ebb away. He remembers Minhyung’s last request, his only request: _Forgive me._

“Minhyung,” Johnny says. 

Mark looks at him with curious eyes. 

“Yes, Youngho?” Mark replies. 

“Do you remember what you last said to me?” Johnny asks, not giving the slightest fuck that they’re standing in the middle of an empty parking lot. He’s waited centuries for this. He figures that the Fates will give him a goddamn break. Johnny holds his arms out, remembers how Minhyung had felt the first time he’d done this, in the dead of night, hidden from everyone but each other.

Mark looks sad, small and cautious, and steps into Johnny’s embrace. 

Mark does not have the build that Minhyung once had. Mark is slight, a bit thinner in Johnny’s arms, but he feels the same. 

“You know that there is nothing to forgive, don’t you?” Johnny says, his chin resting on the top of Mark’s head. “You won’t believe me, but you don’t.” 

Johnny feels Mark deflate in his arms, sagging like a ragdoll, the weight of his regret so heavy it falls on Johnny’s shoulders as well. His heart is racing, and it’s a wonder. This should be impossible, but here he stands with his lover in another lifetime, in another world, so very, very human.

Youngho and Minhyung had not known anything like the internet and technology that allowed for communication that was virtually face-to-face. They had not known anything of openly showing affection for one another, had not conducted their love anywhere beyond the confines of the four walls of Minhyung's room.

Johnny feels Mark press his face into his chest and take a deep breath before letting it out.

"I searched how many lifetimes," Mark says, his voice small and muffled against Johnny's shirt. "I didn’t remember you in every single one, but when I did, I kept hoping you would turn up. I think I gave up a long time ago. I didn't think I deserved this."

"This?" Johnny asks, bringing his hand up to cup Mark's jaw.

"You," Mark replies, looking up at Johnny. "Another chance."

"I'm sorry it took a while," Johnny says softly, laughing under his breath. "You know how bad the traffic's gotten since back in the day."

"Yeah, man, remember when all we had were horses?" Mark laughs, his eyes shining.

The sunlight slants onto Mark's face, his irises glowing honey brown as the light catches them. Johnny remembers the very first time Minhyung had taken his breath away, his eyes hooded, illuminated only by the torches leading to Minhyung's quarters, Minhyung pressing him up against the wall.

"I would have you here if I could," Minhyung had said.

Johnny holds him close, and so much of the man he knows is hidden away by a shroud of guilt that Mark doesn't quite have a name for yet, Johnny is sure. But Minhyung is here now, standing with his chest rising and falling, a new name on his tongue.

Without speaking, Johnny tilts Mark's chin up with a crooked finger, and Mark watches him cautiously. Johnny's intention is clear, but he waits for a sign, anything. Mark's eyes are filled with a longing so familiar that Johnny nearly chokes on it.

It only takes a split-second after Mark nods for Johnny to bring his lips crashing onto Mark's, the soft slip-slide exhilarating in a way that Johnny had thought he would never have again.

Mark's kiss feels measured, tentative like he still can't believe this is real, but Johnny takes his face in both hands, deepens the kiss, his tongue sweeping across the seam of Mark's lips for entry, and there it is--the rush of teeth and a broken sound, small and fragile from Mark who pulls him in closer, closer, the only thing separating them are the clothes they wear, his hands gripping at Johnny's shirt so tight he thinks it's probably ruined now. 

Johnny pulls away slowly, pressing a chaste kiss before catching his breath. The world still turns. The parking lot has emptied. Distantly, the LS Bells toll once again to mark the end of another school day. Mark watches him, breathless, before his smile grows and grows and grows.

"We don't have to hide in the shadows anymore," Johnny says, pulling his lower lip between his teeth and smiling.

Mark blushes, cheeks dusted a pink like the morning sky he'd dreamt of, that he now remembers, and it's a sight to behold. Johnny hadn't known that he could blush. Inwardly, he wonders if Mark blushes anywhere else.

"We don't," Minhyung replies, nodding once and looking away.

"What is it?" Johnny asks, curious at the sudden shyness.

Mark takes a breath.

"Do you want to spend the night?" Mark asks, chin up high like Johnny remembers. He smiles to himself. His Little Lion is starting to show his teeth again.

"I had almost forgotten how forward you could be," Johnny teases, and Mark punches him in the arm.

"Not like that!" Mark says, feigning disgust. "Just--we have so much to catch up on."

It's true. They have lifetimes to remember, all of their past lives catching up with them in one fell swoop. They have an entire breadth of history between them, and so many stories to tell, and yet somehow, inexplicably, the gods had deemed them to find each other feeling the same, the affection that Youngho had had the last night he'd seen Minghyung amplified now as Johnny rakes his eyes over his lover in Mark Lee.

Johnny can't even begin to wrap his head around how to handle this. It's not like he personally knows anyone who has been reincarnated before; there isn’t a help hotline for this kind of thing. It should be terrifying, but regardless of whether the God of his Jesuit education or the gods of old are behind all this, it is clear that the powers-that-be blew through this particular lifetime, into their campus to bring them together.

"Sure," Johnny says softly, stroking his fingers through Mark's wavy black hair. "I'll spend the night."

⚔⚔⚔

The Queen Regnant is a silhouette leaning against Minhyung’s open door. Minhyung glances at her as she watches him finish tying up the cloth he’s using to hold the few belongings he has decided to bring with him. Her arms are crossed, her mouth no doubt turned down at the corners, even if he can’t see her face clearly at the moment. 

“I wish you wouldn’t go,” Queen Joohyun says quietly. “But I know I cannot stop you.”

Minhyung is quiet as he tests the weight of his modest parcel. 

“You didn’t try to stop me, Your Majesty,” Minhyung says. He would have said this with more mirth if he was capable of producing any. 

“I wouldn’t, not after everything,” she replies, sweeping into the room, striding over to his bed and taking a seat. Queen Joohyun has barely aged since Minhyung first met her, her beauty eternal, unmoving, but it is in the tired set of her shoulders, the sadness in her eyes much like that fateful morning two years prior when she had sealed his fate, and Youngho’s. 

She sighs as she casts her gaze on everything in the room. So much of it will remain here. Minhyung has only brought his most practical clothing, a small hatchet, his smartest pair of boots. On the mantel, Griever sits, glinting in the sunlight that streams into the room from the open door. 

“Will you not take that?” Queen Joohyun asks, nodding toward his sword. “That was made for you.” 

Minhyung glances at it, his stomach clenching. He hasn’t touched his sword in months, the last time having been the day of the finalization of Gerota’s annexation to Attolia, for formality. He does not care to carry it with him any longer. 

And yet, it is his, as much an extension of him as it is a representation of who he was, what purpose he served. 

Minhyung reaches up and takes his sword in his hand, the heft familiar, comforting now after all these months without it. His constant companion. He takes the leather belt and wraps it around his waist, securing the strap with the buckle in place before turning to the Queen.

He approaches her, falling to his knees one last time, his hand over his heart. Queen Joohyun tugs on his shoulder, making him rise. There are tears in her eyes, and Minhyung aches for the knowledge that he is the cause of them, but he cannot remain in Attolia another day longer, and this is the heavy weight that they both have to come to terms with and carry. 

“My Queen, forgive me for my transgressions,” Minhyung says, his voice breaking. This should not be this difficult, but it has always been a difficult task, trying to parse where exactly his love and devotion to the Queen Regnant stemmed from, and why it burned for so long only to be extinguished the day Youngho took his last breath. 

“My Sword,” Queen Joohyun says, her voice laced with regret and sorrow. “Forgive me for mine.” 

She takes him into her arms, and Minhyung feels his resolve break momentarily, his arms coming around to her sides, his face in her neck. For a moment, he is once again 7 years old with a skinned knee and a princess there to calm his crying, and in a moment, he remembers that he is no longer that, but rather the version of him that has fought and won wars for her. 

He is not her Son. And today, he is no longer her Sword. 

“Yukhei will protect you, Your Majesty,” Minhyung says, pulling back, clearing his throat. “I saw to it that he would be more than adequate to fill my shoes. He’s learned from the best.” 

He takes a step back, and then another, until the Queen Regnant rises, using one elegant hand to wipe the tears from the corner of her eyes. She reaches into the pocket sewn into her gown and pulls out a velvet satchel, the green embroidered with the royal seal in gold thread. It appears hefty, and Minhyung is mildly nauseated at the thought of just how much is worth in gold coin sitting inside of it. 

“This is all I ask, Minhyung,” Queen Joohyun. “That you take this with you, to tide you over, to get you rations wherever you might go.” 

Minhyung holds his tongue. He does not say that there is no need for currency where he is going. 

He takes the satchel and undoes the parcel of his clothing to place it securely inside so she can see that he’s bringing it with him. This appeases her, it seems, her face smoothing out somewhat. He will find people along the way who will benefit from the weight of gold that he now carries. 

“Thank you, My Queen,” Minhyung says, and slings the cloth over his shoulder. Queen Joohyun walks toward the door and steps out, but Minhyung pauses before following her. 

He stands in the middle of his room and takes it all in, casting one, long, last look at the bed on which Youngho had taught him the meaning of ecstasy and worship; the bathtub where they had sit for hours, warm in each other’s embrace, the true emotion of intimacy demonstrated in their small teasing; the window overlooking the palace gardens where the ghost of Youngho stands nightly, never speaking to Minhyung, never turning to face him. 

Breathing has been difficult as of late, but even more so at this moment. _It is time to go_ , Minhyung tells himself. 

He wonders if Youngho’s ghost will follow him to the woods, as well. 

There isn’t much fanfare that takes place for his departure. He had not expected Her Majesty to be present, but perhaps he underestimated her affection for him. And her guilt towards him. Chanyeol meets them at the end of the hallway, genuflecting in front of the Queen Regnant before they make their way towards one of the entrances into the palace found in the back gardens. 

They walk quietly on the grassy path until they stop at the gate, and Chanyeol presses a hand to Minhyung’s elbow to stop him from walking. 

“You--” Chanyeol begins, and then glances up. Minhyung sees his eyes beginning to redden. He cannot have this, cannot watch his dearest friend cry. “You are the best man I have ever known, General. Attolia mourns the loss of her son.” 

Inwardly, Minhyung wonders if this will be true. 

Chanyeol surprises Minhyung by throwing his arms around Minhyung’s shoulders, patting him strongly on the back twice, and then stepping away in one fluid motion before bringing his hand to his heart in the Royal Salute. 

“Thank you,” Minhyung says, resolve firmly back in place now that he is here, at the gate that spells his freedom from the reminders of his gravest sin. 

“Whenever you want to come home,” Queen Joohyun says, her voice firm, like she’s trying to convince herself that Minhyung will actually return. “Just come home.” 

All three of them know he will not be coming back. 

“My Queen,” Minhyung says. “My Captain.” 

Minhyung nods, and walks out through the gates, and away from Attolia forever.


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you nervous?” Johnny asks softly, walking closer to where Mark is standing against the counter. 
> 
> “Not really,” Mark replies, jutting his chin up. “Are you?” 
> 
> Johnny steps in a little closer. Mark shifts his hips, rests both his hands on the counter behind him. 
> 
> “Nervous isn’t the word I would use,” Johnny replies. Mark’s breathing picks up. Johnny doesn’t miss the way Mark’s eyes land on his lips. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end, folks. :D

EPILOGUE

“The place is a mess,” Mark says while he slides the key into the doorknob. Johnny stands close, close enough to see the flush on Mark’s neck while Mark apologizes, going on about not thinking he would have company. 

The apartment in Xanland is modest, certainly more space than Johnny is used to, and certainly less space than the room Minhyung had once occupied. 

“I’m surprised there’s no black marble,” Johnny teases as he toes his boat shoes off, his socked feet a little slippery on the large white tiles. Mark throws him a look over his shoulder while he shoves his empty pizza boxes into a black garbage bag and gathers two empty cans of beer with one hand. 

“You know full well it was her decision and not mine,” Mark says while he runs the tap and washes his hands. 

Johnny feels a rush of affection, remembering Minhyung’s room. He looks around at the low ceilings of this one, at the small kitchen to the left of the door, and the round wooden table with matching chairs to the right of it. There’s a black leather couch pressed up against the wall, and a television opposite it. From where Johnny is standing, he has a direct line of vision into Mark’s bedroom, the laundry piled on the foot of the bed already making him smile a little. 

Mark doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands, it seems, now that Johnny’s inside his room, and it’s so similar to the first night Minhyung had invited him over, and also so unlike it, because Minhyung had been the one who had taken him by the wrist and guided him into his room. Johnny remembers the opulence of it, the white wood of his massive bed, the heat from the fireplace, the first time he had ever laid eyes on Griever. 

“Are you nervous?” Johnny asks softly, walking closer to where Mark is standing against the counter. 

“Not really,” Mark replies, jutting his chin up. “Are you?” 

Johnny steps in a little closer. Mark shifts his hips, rests both his hands on the counter behind him. 

“Nervous isn’t the word I would use,” Johnny replies. Mark’s breathing picks up. Johnny doesn’t miss the way Mark’s eyes land on his lips. 

“Oh? What would you use then, Johnny?” Mark asks, and it’s delicious how the drop in his voice makes Johnny remember how it felt to be Youngho, how it felt to be at the mercy of General Lee Minhyung. 

“Excited?” Johnny says, bringing his hands to land on either side of Mark’s, the stone of the countertop cold on his palms as he brackets Mark with his arms and leans in to brush his lips against the shell of Mark’s ear. “Aroused?” 

“Bold, aren’t you?” Mark teases, his baritone making want spike in Johnny’s gut. 

“You’re no better,” Johnny replies, hips shifting just the smallest bit closer. “I thought I was here to ‘catch up on things’.” 

“You are,” Mark says, but his hands have moved from behind him to hook both pointer fingers through Johnny’s belt loops. “This is us catching up.” 

Johnny closes his eyes and rests his forehead on Mark’s, a sigh escaping his lips. Three years and multiple centuries and separate lifetimes apart only for Fate to bring them back together, looped and woven and inextricable from each other the way they used to be, the way they should have been before the land that they swore oaths to decided to fuck up whatever more it was that they could have been. 

His skin is alive with electricity, and he wonders if that, too, is a gift from the gods. 

Johnny brings his lips down and Mark surges up and his kiss feels like a wave against jagged rocks, like the beginning of time, like heavens splitting open and bringing forth rain. His kiss is a lifeforce and Johnny drinks from it, parched from the years and years between them. Mark breathes heavy through his nose, his tongue sliding along Johnny’s teeth before Johnny bites down lightly and Mark moans, low and deep.

There’s no putting it off, Johnny thinks, his hands on Mark’s hips to guide him as they both frantically make their way into Mark’s bedroom, Johnny bumping his knee on the coffee table and Mark smacking his elbow onto the door frame as they refuse to break the kiss.

Mark spins them around and throws Johnny against his clean laundry and Johnny is sprawled on the bed while he watches Mark push his jacket off and pull his shirt over his head. Johnny smiles to himself. 

His Minhyung has truly returned. 

Johnny remembers the luxury of Minhyung’s massive four-poster, the cream-colored canopy overhead. Mark’s bed is hardly that, but it’s certainly a queen-sized mattress his ass is lying on, and Mark has a tattoo of flowers on his ribs, and Johnny groans at how hot he looks, how maddening it is to see his lover reincarnated in this form, to have Mark Lee shucking his black jeans off and kneeling between Johnny’s legs while Johnny props himself up on his elbows to watch Mark work deft fingers on his belt buckle. 

Johnny’s entire body is a livewire, and he feels the arousal course through his body, his cock starting to fill out so close to where Mark’s fingers work down his zipper. His vision swims, his memory and his present blurring into one haze as Mark’s fingers curl under the garter of his Calvin Kleins and Johnny lifts his hips to ease their way down over the bones jutting out, down over his thighs. 

Mark pushes Johnny’s shirt up and pauses, his breath catching in his throat when he sees the scar on Johnny’s abdomen. Tentative fingers trace over the raised flesh, Mark’s eye shining in the low light before he kisses over the skin there, making Johnny shudder out a breath. No one else has ever touched over that spot. 

“Get over here,” Johnny says, tugging Mark up by the hand. He doesn’t miss the low whine that Mark lets out when he starts to climb up, but Johnny pushes himself back, adjusts his body to rest on the mountain of pillows that sit on the head of Mark’s bed as Mark straddles him and Johnny holds him close. 

In a flurry of movement, he turns them over so that Mark lies under him, and Johnny is swimming in emotion, breathing in the light scent of the cologne that Mark had spritzed on earlier that day, lingering on his neck as Johnny noses at his clavicle. 

“You feel the same,” Mark says, breathless, his hands in Johnny’s hair, his lips wet on the shell of Johnny’s ear. “I didn’t think I would remember.” 

“It’s been a while,” Johnny says, trailing his hand down Mark’s side, fingers splayed in the spaces between his ribs, right over the flowers. Mark hums and presses a kiss to Johnny’s eyebrow.

“Time to reacquaint ourselves then,” Mark says, and drags Johnny’s jaw up to kiss him, and the urgency with which he kisses making Johnny feel like he’s drunk, drunk on whiskey and rum and all the other things he’s ever taken in in all the lifetimes he now remembers. Mark is potent in a way that no drink or drug can ever replicate, and Johnny realizes just how much he has been chasing this particular feeling only to have it here now, pressed against him, flowing through him. 

This is everything and nothing like their first time. Johnny’s hands are everywhere, stroking into the supple skin of Mark’s thighs, and he moves just like Johnny’s body remembers. It feels so much like they’re picking up where they last left off and it’s incredible, the want that builds inside of him as Mark keens into his touch, Johnny’s teeth raking over Mark’s lips until they’re red and swollen, glistening with their spit and whispering filth under his breath. 

“Do you want me to take you apart?” Johnny whispers, his hot breath skimming against Mark’s jaw, pressing his erection into the thigh Mark has lodged between his legs. 

“I want you to ruin me,” Mark replies, and it’s all Johnny needs before he’s kissing his way down Mark’s torso, pausing to take one pert nipple into his mouth and laving at it with his tongue, making Mark squirm under his ministrations, his hips bucking up to find purchase. Mark’s cock is beautiful, turgid and red and curving up towards his belly, resting in a bed of wiry hair as black as coal, and Johnny has never seen anything look more delectable. 

Johnny shimmies his way down the bed. Mark’s laundry is now strewn all over the floor, but neither of them care, not when they’re here, reliving their affair in a world that no longer demands anything of them. Johnny kneels at Mark’s feet before pulling his shirt off to join Mark’s laundry, and readjusting himself, watching Mark watch him, Mark’s lower lip caught between his teeth while he looks at Johnny through his lashes. 

_ Ruin me _ , Mark had said. 

Johnny places his palms on Mark’s knees, and pushes them apart, his feet planted firmly on the bed on either side of Johnny as he leans in, eyes fixed on Mark, and licks at the leaking slit of Mark’s cock, making Mark whine long and high, before taking the tip into his mouth and sucking hard. 

Mark’s hand flies to Johnny’s hair, and Johnny hopes that he remembers just how rough they used to like it. He takes Mark’s entire length in slow, slowly, Johnny willing himself to relax his throat as Johnny buries his nose in Mark’s hair, the scent of Mark clinging there musky and addictive. Johnny adjusts himself on the bed, his chest flush against the mattress, Mark’s legs thrown over his shoulders, and Johnny allows himself to choke as Mark’s fingers grip at Johnny’s hair, tugging so hard it makes Johnny’s eyes water. 

“Fuck,” Mark mutters. “Fuck, you feel so good.” 

His eyes are hooded, looking down at Johnny, and Johnny bobs his head up and down before he sees Mark’s eyes roll to the back of his head, throwing his head back, crying out a “Fuck!” as Mark thrusts into Johnny’s willing mouth, his thighs quaking on either side of Johnny’s head. 

He slowly pulls off, hollowing his cheeks before stroking over the underside of Mark’s cock with his tongue, fisting his erection while Johnny takes in how flushed Mark is all over.

“Mark,” Johnny says, the name slowly becoming more and more familiar in his mouth. “Lube?”

Mark groans out once before opening his eyes and reaching blindly over to the bedside table and pulling a drawer open and fishing out a half-empty bottle of Astroglide and a string of condoms. Johnny takes a moment to send a thanks up to God or the gods for the invention of modern-day sex paraphernalia, especially water-based lubricants and latex. 

“Do you really need one?” Mark groans when Johnny takes the condoms from him, making Johnny smile. “I’m clean. Are you?”

It doesn’t sound like an accusation, merely a breathy question that belies just how aroused Mark actually is. They never used to fuck with these things, and by all the old gods and the new, Johnny wants nothing more than to sheathe himself in Mark’s heat unhindered. 

“I’ve never fucked without one in this lifetime,” Johnny says, popping the cap open and pouring a generous amount of lubricant onto his fingers, his thumb spreading the cold viscous fluid over his index and middle fingers. “So I’m clean.” 

Mark reaches out, making Johnny drape himself all over him so Mark can kiss him again, hard and rough. 

“Good,” Mark says, pulling away to look Johnny in the eye. “I don’t care about the others just as long as it’s me from now on.” 

Johnny’s head fills with white noise when Mark wraps his legs around his waist and Johnny’s neglected cock slides against the crevice between Mark’s ass, the tip catching on the puckered hole while Mark moves his hips against Johnny’s. The sudden possessiveness in Mark’s works is maddening, and Johnny reaches between them to rub his index finger over Mark’s entrance, the hole clenching tight around the tip. 

This is going to be Johnny’s undoing, just like a lifetime ago when he’d first breached Minhyung’s walls and slid home and Minhyung had cried, pillow caught between his teeth as they waited for the searing pain to subside. Johnny hadn’t known about prep then. Gerota hadn’t taught him jack shit about sex ed. 

Johnny takes his time with Mark, slides in one finger, and moves until Mark starts to demand another one. Johnny whispers, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” and Mark claws at his back, nails not-quite-blunt, and Johnny knows that there will be red welts on his skin in the morning, and he relishes in seeing them in the mirror come dawn. 

Their kisses are ravenous while Johnny scissors Mark open, sweat on both their skin between them as Mark refuses to let Johnny go, his arms thrown around Johnny’s shoulders as his hardness rubs along Johnny’s cock, the friction delicious as Johnny strains to prevent himself from coming too soon. 

Mark won’t stop moving, won’t stop bucking up into him, and by the third finger, he’s impatient enough to pull away from Johnny’s kisses and growl, “If you don’t fuck me right now, I’m kicking you out, I swear to God,” which is how Johnny finds himself circling his cock with his hand and slowly pushing the tip into Mark’s entrance, hole so tight it’s like Johnny hasn’t spent God know’s how long stretching him out. 

“Oh my fucking _God_ ,” Mark groans, his knees on either side of Johnny’s torso. “Oh my God, you’re gonna tear me in two, Jesus Christ.” 

Mark’s so fucking tight that Johnny can barely spare a thought about how Minhyung’s language has certainly gotten much more colorful in their time apart, and all noise in Johnny’s head blanks when he bottoms out, Mark’s legs wound around his waist as Johnny breathes deep and waits for Mark to adjust around him. 

“Move,” Mark says, his eyes opening, the pleading in them clear as day as Johnny moves, the gentle rocking of his hips making Mark moan, deep from inside his chest, his nails digging into Johnny’s arms. “Yes, like that. Harder.” 

And Johnny is at Mark’s service, swears right there into Mark’s ear that he will do everything that Mark commands, and he means it. Now that they’ve found each other again, Johnny is going to do everything in his power to never lose Mark again, and if that means giving in to every whim, Johnny will do it. 

“Fuck me until I forget my name,” Mark growls into Johnny’s ear, the pace punishing in its speed now, Johnny’s head swimming like he’s dazed. He’s so fucking close, and by the sounds of it, Mark isn’t far behind. 

Johnny’s hand fists Mark’s hair and he braces himself on his elbow by the side of Mark’s head, fingers pulling at the strands as Mark bares his teeth, groans out a “Fuck yes, fuck, right there!”, bites down on the meat of Johnny’s shoulder, his yell muffled against the skin. Johnny’s hips are relentless now that he can feel Mark clenching harder around him, and he knows Mark is close, the way he’s running his mouth, the way he looks into Johnny’s eyes as their sweat-slicked foreheads press against each other.

“C-close, I’m close, Johnny,” Mark whispers, his body shaking, his tight grip on Johnny’s waist spurning Johnny on. Mark tightens his vise grip around Johnny’s cock, and Johnny spits in his hand and brings it between them to take Mark’s pre-cum-slick erection in his hand to stroke along the shaft. 

When Mark throws his head back in his release, Johnny swallows his scream with his lips. He wants to taste this desperation and bottle it up, keep it close and safe and for his eyes only. Mark’s cry is muffled before he pulls away to pant hot breaths into Johnny’s ear, his hot arousal spilling between their bellies and over Johnny’s hand.

It’s incredible how sensitive Mark is, his hips stuttering as Johnny strokes up Mark’s over-sensitive cock, milking it for every fucking drop before Johnny brings his hand to mouth, licks along the length of his palm, Mark’s hot cum slipping onto Johnny’s mouth while Johnny locks eyes with his lover who mewls a broken sound. 

“That’s so fucking hot,” Mark says, his whine a delicious sound that goes straight to Johnny’s cock where he’s still buried inside of Mark. Johnny moves to pull out, but Mark keeps him firmly in place, locking his feet at the ankles and tugging Johnny close to him, the spunk between them be damned. 

“Don’t pull out,” Mark whispers. “Not until you finish inside me.” 

And oh, Johnny is so far gone for this man, absolutely head-over-heels. He will do anything Mark asks. Anything. 

“You want me to fill you up?” Johnny says, changing the pace to one that’s languid, as slow as humanly capable, given that Johnny so desperately wants to cum, but also wants to draw this out as long as he can. 

He’s already lost his lover once. From this point on Johnny’s going to make sure that every chance he gets to be with Mark will carry the same emotion that he moves with now. There will hopefully be more days to learn about Mark Lee, about the things that Minhyung has learned to love and hate over the course of many lifetimes. But right now, he is Seo Youngho, and in his arms, Lee Minghyung, and he is determined to make this excruciatingly good for the man he gave his heart to until his very last breath. 

Johnny balances on both his elbows while Mark has one leg down on the mattress, the other hooked over Johnny’s waist, and he fucks into Mark slowly, using all his restraint, sliding in home and bottoming out so deep it makes Mark keen. 

“Oh God, oh my God, you’re going to kill me,” Mark groans, gasping as Johnny presses down hard against his prostate. 

“An eye for an eye, then,” Johnny laughs before it’s cut off with a moan, Mark pushing Johnny in deeper into him with his leg. 

“Yeah, thought that would shut you up,” Mark huffs, presenting his cheek for a kiss, which Johnny obliges. 

Johnny catches a breath, willing himself to hold on. He doesn’t know how much longer he can last, but he keeps at the excruciatingly slow pace while he noses at Mark’s neck, along his jaw, before stealing a kiss, and then another, and then another. 

They pause only for breaths before they’re drawn together again, unwilling to have any force separate them for any reason, every single point of contact as essential as their heartbeats. Johnny moves gently, shallow thrusts, then deeper, pulling out until just the tip when he feels too close. 

Time passes like molasses as Johnny edges himself over and over, Mark’s tight, tight heat surrounding him until finally, finally, Mark’s cock begins to fill out again, slowly making its presence known as it rubs against Johnny’s abdomen. 

“Already hard again for me, baby?” Johnny teases, thrusting in viciously hard, so hard Mark chokes on a breath. The pet name comes out unbidden, but definitely not unwelcome if Mark’s subsequent whine is anything to go by. 

“Call me that again,” Mark says before licking along Johnny’s eyebrow. “I like it.” 

Mark is filthy, Johnny is fast learning, and he enjoys being filthy.

“Gonna cum in you, baby,” Johnny groans, his teeth biting down on Mark’s ear as his tongue curls over the shell, making Mark shudder and pull Johnny in closer. 

“Fucking finally,” Mark replies, and Johnny fucks into him faster, faster, so hard that Mark’s beddings spring off the mattress in one corner, so hard that Mark’s head hits the headboard but not before Johnny’s hand softens the blow. 

“Fuck, Mark, I’m gonna cum,” Johnny has Mark’s head cradled in his palm and he presses his forehead against Mark’s, his vision blurring as he chases, chases, runs off the edge and lets go, the wet squelch of his ejaculate disgusting and erotic as Mark cries out Johnny’s name, his orgasm following suit, more of the hot release spilling between them as Johnny empties himself into Mark. 

Warmth washes over Johnny’s entire body as he comes down from the high of his climax, settling for a few minutes to catch his breath before very carefully pulling his softened cock of Mark, who whines at that loss. 

They’re both gasping for air, and Johnny remembers doing just that, sprawled out on a mattress fit for kings, with clean white cotton sheets smoother than the rougher linens that Gerota had preferred. Here they lie, breathless, on blue sheets that are soaked through with their sweat and spit and spend. 

Mark remains boneless, arms and legs spread out like a starfish, his soft cock lying in a mess of his own cum, his face beyond faded. It makes a zing of satisfaction course through Johnny, knowing that he can still decimate his lover like this, even if it’s been centuries. He moves to stand, before Mark latches on to his wrist.

“Where are you going?” Mark asks, the worry creasing through the space between his eyebrows. Johnny’s heart aches. 

“Baby, I’m not leaving,” Johnny says softly, pressing a kiss to Mark’s nose before rising to stand. “I’m just gonna clean us up. I’ll be right back.” 

Johnny looks among the pile of clothes on the floor and finds a newly-laundered towel, picking that up and walking over to the door before throwing a wink over his shoulder, Mark rolling his eyes at him and laughing a “Go, hurry up!” and shooing Johnny off. 

In the reflection, Johnny sees the mess of hickeys that Mark has left, everywhere on his clavicles and the side of his neck. Kun is never gonna let him live this down. Johnny looks wrecked, his hair in disarray, his lips kiss-bitten and swollen from Mark’s ravenous sucking. Johnny holds the towel under the running water to soak it through, twisting the excess out and wiping himself down with one end of the towel, before soaking the other end and bringing it back into Mark’s room. 

Mark’s still sprawled out on his bed and his soaked blue sheets, his eyes closed, before Johnny’s weight makes the bed dip and he opens his glazed eyes up at Johnny. God, Mark looks so, so cute, like a goddamn anime character and Johnny’s chest clenches around the knowledge that he’s  _ Mark’s _ now. He’s Minhyung’s  _ again _ . 

“Hey,” Johnny says, and Mark looks at him, the smallest, most content smile Johnny’s seen in a long, long time. “This might be cold.”

Mark hisses through the sudden change in temperature, but relaxes as Johnny wipes off their slick mess from Mark’s torso, his abdomen, his hips, and between his legs. Johnny nudges Mark off the wet spot he’s lying in and Mark says, “Leave it, we never used to clean up.” 

Johnny tells him he’s disgusting. Mark tells him to kindly fuck off, before snuggling up closer to Johnny and sighing contentedly as Johnny finishes up. 

God, he’s missed his lover. 

“Can I get us water?” Johny asks, and Mark groans a “Fuck, yes please,” and smiling up at Johnny. 

It’s clear that Mark already knows he’s got Johnny wrapped around his finger, and Johnny relishes in that, relishes in the knowledge that this isn’t an accident, this is Fate, and Johnny’s never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. As he brings two mugs and a pitcher of water over to Mark’s bedroom to rest it on his messy side table, Johnny stiffens his resolve to do everything in his power to remain by Mark’s side this time. No more wars, no more sneaking around in the darkness, no more threat of their countries coming for their heads. 

Just Johnny and Mark. Youngho and Minhyung. 

By the time they catch their breaths and rehydrate, the sun has long fallen, and they’re both leaning against the headboard, Johnny’s hand in both of Mark’s, his fingers so much longer than Mark’s own. 

“What happened?” Johnny asks quietly, the Frank Ocean Mark has playing in the background low enough to be ambient noise to their conversation. “What happened after me?”

Mark looks away, visibly swallows. 

“I left Attolia,” Mark replies quietly. “Two years after Her Majesty married Queen Kang Seulgi and the annexation was complete. They didn’t need me anymore and I couldn’t stay there anymore.” 

“Where did you go?” Johnny asks. 

“Away,” Mark replies, and Johnny brings him close, presses a kiss to Mark’s temple. He doesn’t elaborate.

“Well, we’re here now, aren’t we?” Johnny replies, slipping his fingers between Mark’s own. “How about we get dinner delivered and you can spend all night telling me about Mark Lee and whoever the hell else you’ve been in between Attolia and now?”

Mark flushes, his smile radiant as he reaches for his phone, the screen illuminating his face so brightly Johnny can see every mole. 

“You wanna get Flaming Wings delivered?” Mark asks. 

Johnny’s stomach rumbles before he can open his mouth. 

“Thought you’d never ask,” Johnny replies, leaning in to kiss the corner of Mark’s smile as Mark scrolls through his phone for the number to the restaurant. 

⚔⚔⚔

Minhyung opens his eyes, the sound of cicadas loud now that summer has fallen in the woods. He rises from the bed he’s made for himself, leaves layered on top of each other and thrown out as they dry up. The cave remains cool despite the sweltering sun, and Minhyung is grateful that he had had the foresight to gather water from yesterday’s short rainfall.

He feels the exhaustion seep into his back and into his bones as he rises, stretches his body and his back out, hearing each bone crack as he twists. There are potatoes and carrots in the small crate that he has by his makeshift bed, and he plans to stew them with a few rabbits when he goes out to hunt later in the day.

His head is a fog. He’s tired of reliving the battle every night only to be consumed by thoughts of the memory by day. This is penance, he thinks, whenever he feels the weight of it.

Minhyung’s days are quiet, spent here in the small home he’s made for himself. He’ll roam the forest once in a while, but he finds solace in being able to live for himself and not worry about any duties asked of him for the day. He hunts and he fishes and he builds fires and puts them out and carries on.

It is an insular life.

Out here in the woods, Youngho’s ghost comes and goes, but it never speaks to him. Minhyung just waits for an end he feels coming closer and closer on his heels.

Patiently, Minhyung waits.

He wonders to himself often, sitting with his eyes fixed on the fire, why his life had taken the course it had. Minhyung’s days are an endless stretch, but he finds that there is momentary peace to be found, even if the guilt he carries around is a corpse with its arms around his shoulders, dragging its feet on the ground behind him.

He sets out for the day, sharpened spear in hand, and loses himself in the focus of a hunt. Sometimes he’ll hear Youngho’s voice, a whisper beside him, telling him when to strike. It usually ends with a kill. Minhyung will breathe thanks silently.

When the sun is overhead and Minhyung returns to the cave with three rabbits in tow, he sets out to prepare to skin them. The forest is not without game, and he considers himself lucky that he had found this spot after days of wandering aimlessly, his feet tired and blistered from his endless trek away from Attolia, using Griever as nothing more than a walking stick in the rough terrain.

Minhyung has learned to pray, but he only ever addresses one being, his express hope that Youngho still lingers even when Minhyung cannot see him. He speaks to him often, and out loud, Minhyung’s chapped lips forming words that no one will hear save for himself. He thinks about the nights and the moonlight that kisses the entrance to his cave, the dust dancing in the light as Minhyung drifts off to sleep.

Minhyung’s body is skin and bones now, and even without mirrors, he can imagine just how sharp his face has become. He wonders who will find him. He wonders if anyone will, this deep in the forest.

The rabbit in his hands is by no means fleshy enough to fill him up, but he has enough of them to make something substantial for his meal today. He’s learned to not let any part go to waste, so he keeps the fur and sets it to the side, blood slick in his hands as he skewers the small game before rubbing it down with what remains of his rock salt.

As the pot of water simmers over the open flame, Minhyung exhales slowly. Something about today feels different, his entire body twice its weight, like the pull to the earth is so much stronger than it normally is. He straightens his back only to find himself hunched over the wooden board he uses to cut the carrots on almost immediately.

He glances at the opening of the cave, and in a second, the specter is gone.

“In a hurry today, Youngho?” Minhyung calls out.

There is, of course, no response.

Minhyung lets his meal cook while he stretches out on the soft of the straw and the leaves of what he calls his bed. He stares at the grey stone that makes up the walls. Just a shade darker and they would look like the black marble of his old room. He wonders what has become of his old room, wonders if Joohyun kept it the same, or if she converted it for Yukhei’s tastes.

He wonders what’s become of Yukhei. He gets no news of Attolia here. He speaks to very few people, just the shopkeepers when he used to venture on a day’s journey to the closest town, and even then, he is nearly a month’s journey away from his old home.

All he’s had in this time are his thoughts and the longing for a peace that his mind refuses to afford him.

At all times of the day, his thoughts stray to Youngho.

He remembers the difficulty of the first few months after the battle, the deep darkness that had taken over him as the reality of his actions had finally started to creep into every shuttered defense. It had taken everything in Minhyung to keep up appearances, and he had managed it well enough, though, in retrospect, he doubts that Chanyeol had missed any of it. They’d known as they sent him out to war what would come back--not that it stopped them.

A necessary evil, he supposes.

Out here, there is nothing to distract him. It makes things easier and more difficult in equal measure. Often there is just silence that is broken by birdsong or the sound of cicadas or the rustling of the wind. Mihyung doesn’t try very hard, he just exists. 

He exists and when he thinks he is strong enough, he will close his eyes and allow himself to imagine that Youngho lies next to him, that Youngho is just off hunting and will return with wild boar and blood on his hands, that Youngho will fuck into his body at night and they’ll wake in the mornings and do everything all over again.

He doesn’t think he’s very strong.

Minhyung finishes his meal and is hit once again with that feeling that something is coming. A breeze blows through the cave, making Minhyung frown.

Behind him, he hears the clatter of Griever falling to the ground.

He whips his head back and sees the sword lying on the ground, its pommel facing him, the roaring lion visible even in the low firelight and the rays of the slowly setting sun.

A thought overcomes his mind, and almost as if he’s taken over by a spirit, Minhyung finds himself rising to walk over to his old weapon and pick it up. He hasn’t used it in all the days he’s been out here. It just rests, a reminder of his old life, of who he used to be.

_ Get rid of it _ , his mind supplies, and it’s a compelling thought.

So compelling that Minhyung finds himself rushing out of the cave, his sword in hand. A single-minded focus, the only thought coursing through him is the need to hide it from the world, to hide any trace that exists of him. Somewhere no one can reach. Somewhere no one would think to look.

Minhyung races through the woods, uncaring of how his lungs have begun to strain from his effort as the ground begins to curve upwards. His breathing is labored--his stamina is no longer what it used to be, his body untrained for the exertion of an uphill climb, but he keeps his pace, his hands steady. Something is coming and this is what he needs to do to prepare for it. His legs are starting to cramp, and he uses Griever to help him make his way up.

The sun peeks through the trees, the entire face of the mountain cast in an orange hue. It feels fitting for what is to come, though Minhyung can't seem to place yet exactly what is coming. Just that he needs to be ready for it.

What feels like hours pass until Minhyung finds himself at the top of the mountain where it kisses the next one. There is a narrow crevice between the two, large enough for a man to fall into, but deep enough that no one man would ever make it back out. His feet are sore. There is a blister forming on his heel. Griever feels lighter now that it ever has.

The last of the daylight makes it possible to see the glint of the lion on the pommel. As he unsheathes it, the sharp edge twinkles in greeting. Minhyung gets on his knees, holding the sword upright before him.

"Goodbye, old friend," he whispers. The metal is cold where he presses it to his lips.

A symbol, a weapon. There isn't much that distinguishes Minhyung from this instrument for death. He'd long lost count of the number of lives he had taken with its blade buried in someone's body. He does not relish in the thought, though he is sure that once, a long time ago, he had.

Minhyung rises to his feet, looks over the precipice, and with finality, releases the sword from his outstretched hand.

It takes a long time for the sword to come to a clattering halt, the sound so faint that he would have missed it if a strong breeze had blown in and obscured his hearing. With it, a weight is lifted from his shoulders, and he makes his way down the mountain face slowly.

It's strange. He'd thought that parting with something that had once been so essential to him would feel more monumental than this. But then again, he supposes, he'd lost the most important part of him already. Nothing else will compare.

The fire in his cave has died down by the time he's returned. His stomach rumbles, his body having burned off whatever energy he'd managed to glean from his meal prior to his sudden expedition, but he's too tired to care.

Minhyung takes off his worn cotton tunic, finds the spare he has that he'd managed to wash off in the river earlier in the day, and pulls it on. His body feels strange like he's flying apart, like there's nothing holding him together anymore. He is an unspooled thread on the floor.

It is much too early for sleep to be taking over, but Minhyung doesn't resist the fog that seems to make its way into his head. He hasn't even managed to rebuild his fire yet. The cave is cast in darkness, the breeze cold, rustling through the leaves of the trees that guard the front of his little fortress.

Very steadily, Minhyung feels sleep overcome him, the straw under his back suddenly as soft as the mattress he had grown up in. His body feels like it melts into the ground, his eyes remaining closed, his breath steady, in and out, slow, slow.

His heart stops.

Everything is still, only darkness. Darkness. Not even the wind.

And then a voice, and then another, and then another.

Minhyung opens his eyes and finds that he's no longer in the cave. He's standing in water, his bare feet submerged in a lake that only comes up to his ankles, the ends of his trousers wet where they touch the surface.

Minhyung has no need for breath. When he brings his hand to his chest, there is no drumbeat. Only stillness.

"General Lee Minhyung," a voice calls out, and it is difficult to tell whether a man or a woman is speaking to him. He sees no one for miles and miles, only darkness, and the water.

And yet he knows who he is addressing, even if he cannot put a face or a name to it.

"You finally speak," Minhyung says. "After years of prayer, you finally give me a response."

"It is not of the gods to speak the manner you expect, General," the voice responds.

"I am no longer a general," Minhyung retorts. "I am only just Lee Minhyung."

"You were born into this world with that title destined for you--"

"Indeed," Minhyung replies, defiant, despite facing a god. "My entire lifetime in the service of Attolia, to be worthy of a title I never asked for."

The voice does not respond.

"Who are you? What do you know of the destinies that were laid out for me?" Minhyung says, the anger inside of him building, resentment for faceless gods tied in with the desperation that he'd held on to the day Youngho was taken from him. "I was born for Attolia, born into a life of solitude and servitude and discipline and violence, sharpened to the point of being feared."

Minhyung steps forward, the water splashing beneath his feet, yet no ripples appear on the surface.

"It was my destiny, and I never strayed—I went down the path that was forged for me, by  _ you _ , gods. I did my best to be the best, and after—after the battle, all I could hear them say was that I will be woven into tapestries. Now I am history, the Lion Man of Attolia. But I have never felt more hollow," Minhyung says, and he feels anguish that he has not felt in so long. An eternity. 

"Which one of you allowed me to feel love?” he shouts, his voice echoing in this vast chamber. There is a fire in his chest, even if no heartbeat seems to exist there anymore.

“Who dared to leave me with such cruel fate?” Minhyung cries out, his hands landing on his knees as he bends over, the weight of his sorrow crashing down on his shoulders so heavy he can barely carry it. 

“How could you let me taste such divinity, feel the warmest I've ever been, and have  _ me _ take it all away? Surely, you must have had a reason? Answer me!" 

Minhyung’s chest is an open wound, freshly torn apart as if he is reliving the day of his battle all over again, like his ribs have been severed from his sternum. Years of silence for prayers he’s shouted into empty caves and lonely woods.

No answer comes.

Minhyung balls his fists as the tears build in his eyes, the bitterness and the confusion and the self-loathing piercing into every single nerve in his body as he keeps walking forward, his eyes searching for something, some focal point on which to fix his rage upon. He walks and walks and breaks out into a run onto an endless stretch of black water and falls to his knees.

"I am here, begging you to never let me forget him. When my life ends, please unite us again," Minhyung cries, his head pressing forward, the water catching on his hair. "Please have him remember me, please have us remember each other, in every sense. I want to feel his arms around me, I want to know what it is to be loved, not feared.”

Minhyung has had no recourse in the last few years but to recall every detail his feeble mind could conjure up, and he remembers Youngho’s lips on his skin, strong arms wrapped around his waist--the only time Minhyung had ever felt like he was anything other than a weapon, a means to an end. 

“I want another chance with Youngho,” Minhyung sobs, voice weak. ”I want to be with him in my next lifetime."

"Minhyung," the voice finally says. It is not an answer. “What’s done is done.”

"I am tired now,” Mihyung says, his voice so small it barely echoes anymore. “My god, I no longer serve you. My mortality was spent on you. I have nothing left to offer, other than my pride, and even then, I am now spent.” 

Minhyung rocks forward, his body bent over himself. Distantly, he remembers begging like this next to Youngho’s body. 

"Let me live with Youngho, freely, without shame, without doubt,” Minhyung says, his voice now firm. He does not know where the boldness comes from, but it is there. “It is the least you could do."

"You dare make demands of the gods," the voice says placidly, and so much closer. "He was right about you."

"He?" Minhyung asks, his head whipping up from the water, and there stands a man with handsome features, a mole under his eyebrow, a pleasant smile on his face.

"I must say that I've heard much about you, General," the god says.

Minhyung rises. He is not much taller than the body this god has taken.

"Are you ready to go?" the god asks, turning away from Minhyung and walking forward.

"Where am I going?" Minhyung asks, frowning. There is only confusion. He doesn't know where he is to begin with.

"Back to Youngho," the god replies. 

Minhyung stares, mistrust pooling in his belly. Surely, this is in jest. Years of silence only to be told this? Now?

The god sees his hesitation and raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Do you now cast doubt?” the god asks. Minhyung does not reply.

"You have a long journey ahead, General. We must be going," the god says, looking over his shoulder. “After all, it’s the least I can do.”

Minhyung only has questions, so many questions. He has no idea where he is, what this place is, what will become of him, but he thinks about the life he’s led until this point, about every imagined future where Youngho still lived, every carefully-tended memory that Minhyung could recall. He has nothing left to lose.

Minghyung takes a step forward.

And then another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My eternal thanks to Dia, without whom this story would never have existed. Thank you for the idea and for letting me run away with it. This exists because of you, and this is for you. I hope you liked it. <3 I love you!
> 
> To Cap, who read this over and made the most beautiful moodboards for them despite her busy schedule and everything else. Thank you for taking the time to search for the perfect photos to represent this story. They really are integral to it. I love you!
> 
> To Ain, who held my hand the entire time I wrote this, and who suggested that I end with the past. Thank you for the idea, and for beta reading this so quickly and giving me your thoughts and helping me choose moodboards. None of the moodboards posted have been without your opinion. I love you!
> 
> To Any, who once again helped me and handed entire bits of dialogue to really tie this story together. You are an amazing beta and a wonderful friend for helping me work through the knots and kinks of this story. Your input has been so valuable to me and I would not be as proud of this work as it is if you hadn't helped me. Thank you. I love you!
> 
> And to you, dear reader, for taking the time to read this behemoth of a story. I've loved every comment I've gotten for this story and it means so much to me that you read it, and I thank you now for sticking with it til the end. Thank you. <3
> 
> Find me at [my carrd, made by the lovely Erin.](https://t.co/Nm5AvDvn2U)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at [my carrd, ](https://t.co/Nm5AvDvn2U)made by the lovely [Erin](https://t.co/jwzDNfdNsI?amp=1); [twt](https://twitter.com/johnnyseo_paws).
> 
> You can also find me on[cc](https://curiouscat.me/johnnyseo_paws).
> 
> ____
> 
> 1\. The name 'Attolia' is taken from the ''The Thief" series by Megan Whalen Turner. It's an excellent, excellent series and if you haven't read it, please do give it a shot. You won't regret it.
> 
> 2\. The name 'Griever' is taken from Final Fantasy VIII, which is the name of Squall Leonhart's lion crest pendant.
> 
> 3\. The name 'Gerota' is a random one I picked from the human anatomy; Gerota's fascia is a part of the lining of the kidneys and adrenal glands. It bears no symbolic nature. It just sounded cool. haha
> 
> 4\. The layout of Ateneo de Manila University here is based on what I remember of it, and what I know of it now. 
> 
> 5\. Nothing in this story is historically accurate. Please bear that in mind. :D 
> 
> Thank you for reading this first chapter. Please let me know what you thought of it in the comments! Thank you! :D


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